


Against the Bottom

by irithyll



Category: Biohazard | Resident Evil (Gameverse), Resident Evil - All Media Types
Genre: Alcoholism, Angst, Background Valenfield, Depression, Drama, F/M, I'm so sorry for everything, Love Triangle, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Proceed with caution, Romance, Slow Burn, Suicidal Thoughts, dark themes, maladaptive coping mechanisms
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-09
Updated: 2020-04-02
Packaged: 2020-11-28 01:42:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 9
Words: 34,067
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20958362
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/irithyll/pseuds/irithyll
Summary: Claire knows that nothing is ever black and white, so why would love be any different?





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [cyanCaddy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cyanCaddy/gifts).

> As a preface, I want to emphasize the fact that this fic will not be an easy read. It's dark, it's terrible, and it's going to be painful for me to write, but I promise I'm not pulling another Ceremony. It's going to touch on topics that might be sensitive for some, such as alcoholism and suicidal thoughts, so please tread with caution. Thank you for your time and support.

He doesn't understand how things came to be this way.

Leon's heart is racing as he ascends the stairs, his feet falling with heavy stomps as he moves. His lungs are burning and his chest is heaving, but the adrenaline that courses through his veins drives him to continue. He struggles to form a coherent thought and instead just repeats a desperate mantra in his head—_please let everyone be okay, please let _her _be okay._

The sweat that saturates his shirt forces the fabric to cling to him like a second skin. In some subconscious of his mind, he acknowledges that it's uncomfortable, but it's hard to give a damn about much of anything at all when the stakes are so high. Leon doesn't know what he'll find on the rooftop of this damn skyscraper, but he suspects that he isn't going to like any of the possibilities.

He reaches the top of the staircase and his momentum nearly propels him right through the damn door. With a shove of his shoulder, he barricades through the door, and the world is a blur of color as he hurries to take in the scene before him. The wind filters through his sweat-dampened hair, chilling his scalp, and he shivers as he shouts, "Ada, _wait_!"

Ada's standing at the edge of the roof with a fistful of Sherry's shirt in her hand. Her back is to Leon, but he watches her shoulders visibly stiffen at the sound of his voice. Nearby, Jake is prone, gritting his teeth as he drags his limp lower body across the ground with slow, seemingly painful pulls of his arms.

Leon knows this isn't going to end well.

"Leon."

Ada's voice is just as smooth and composed as it's always been and it does something to him that he can't explain. She turns her head to the side, revealing her pale profile against the dark blanket of the night sky, and he knows it's neither the time nor the place for such an observation, but _god_, she's beautiful.

"You don't have to do this," he says, stepping forward as he waves his hands to gesture to both Sherry and Jake, "Whatever _this_ is."

Ada breathes out a dark sound that might be considered a laugh, but he can't really tell. She doesn't face him, but instead turns back towards Sherry as she commands, "Stay out of it, Leon. You wouldn't understand."

He doesn't know if it's her frigid tone or choice of words that spears him through the chest, but the pain radiates outward and travels through his limbs. Leon's rendered speechless for a moment, but he's brought back to reality when Ada lifts Sherry into the air and he watches her feet dangle helplessly above the ground. She's awfully damn close to the edge of that building and he can't remember how many flights of stairs he had to climb to get here, but he knows it was a _lot. _No one could survive a fall from this height.

"You fucking _cunt_!" Jake hisses as his nails scrape against the concrete, creating a sound that makes Leon cringe. "I said I'd fucking do it, so let her go!"

"Jake, no!" Sherry thrashes in Ada's hold, but to no avail. "Don't you _dare_ do it! I'll be alright!"

"Give me a fucking break, Supergirl. You're not gonna survive being splattered into fucking chunks on the pavement." Jake grunts as he glares at Leon. "You going to do something or what, fuckhead?"

"Ada," Leon speaks softly, a hard contrast to the enmity in Jake's tone, "Whatever is going on, we can work it out. Just don't…"

._..kill Sherry_, he thinks as he looks into her pale blue eyes. There's no fear in her stare, no widening of her eyes or tremble to her lower lip—a few of the mannerisms he's so often observed in hostages throughout his career. Sherry's a far cry from the girl she used to be, the one he smuggled out of Raccoon City in hopes of improving her future. His intention was never to get her wrapped up in this mess, but here they were, standing on a rooftop in some dirty Chinese city as she faces her mortality with more poise than even the bravest of men.

"I'm sorry, Leon," Ada begins and, for a moment, he thinks she might actually _mean_ it, "But this is how it has to be."

Leon's heart is pounding, slamming itself against the confines of his ribcage as he attempts to discern how the hell he can pull both women out of this alive. Suddenly, he feels like he's back to where this all began. He may not be wearing the uniform, but Leon's the clueless idiot pleading Ada for some semblance of mercy once again and it makes him feel like a fucking fool.

"Can you explain what's going on?" He takes a step forward. "I can fix this, Ada."

Ada shakes her head, but he tells himself that the fact that she hasn't already thrown Sherry off the roof means he has a chance.

"It's too complex for you to understand."

"Oh, give me a fucking break!" Jake scoffs as he pounds his fist against the ground. "I'll explain it for you since this dramatic fucking _cunt_ insists on dragging it out!"

"Jake..." Sherry says it like it's a warning.

"This bitch here wants to sell me to the fucking U.S. government to earn brownie points and a pretty penny, so she's gonna let Sherry live and I'm gonna _peacefully _go with her and play her dumb fucking game."

"Look, Ada, I can help." Leon forces a smile despite the fact that he feels like he's about to vomit. "I work for the government. If you need something, I can talk to some people and—"

"Just kill me." Sherry scowls. "Drop me. See what happens."

"Don't you fucking _dare_!" Jake shouts. "I swear to _fuck,_ I will kill you and every last one of you dumbasses at Neo Umbrella. There won't be anything left to remember any of you by."

Sherry's still alive. Leon still has a chance. He can get through to her, he _knows_ it. If he can talk some sense into her, convince her that he's on her side, then maybe...

"Please, Ada." His voice quivers. "I can help you. Don't you trust me?"

Ada looks at him, pulls her painted lips into a pretty, feminine smile, and he thinks he might have gotten through to her.

"No."

What?

"Ada…"

It hurts. All of this _hurts._ Ada knows that Sherry means something special to him and, when he looks in her eyes, all he can see is the little girl he saved from Raccoon City back in '98. She's still innocent to him, still a poor girl caught in the wrong place at the wrong time, and he wants to free her from this. Sherry's still too young to be tainted by the cruel reality of this war and she's sure as hell too young to _die_ in it.

But Ada means something special to him too. She's been there since the beginning and he wonders if she feels at all responsible for the way things are now. After all, she's the one who dragged him into this mess in the first place with that cool confidence and that damned kiss in the cable car. If she hadn't started it, maybe it never would have ended up like this.

Or maybe this is all _his_ fault. Sherry wouldn't be here if it wasn't for him. He's the one who got her involved with Simmons, so doesn't that make him inadvertently responsible for her potential death? Her blood will soak his hands just as thoroughly as it will Ada's because of his damn hero complex. As he ponders this, he realizes that there is no avoiding bloodshed. Someone will die by his hand tonight and it was up to him to decide who.

"Sherry," His voice is hoarse, cracked, "It's going to be okay."

He might be lying. Fuck, he doesn't know. All he knows is that Sherry is too young to die and he doesn't know what he feels for Ada, but it's something that will leave him feeling even more hollow than he already does if she dies. He doesn't know how to define this relationship—or lack thereof—that they share, but he knows Ada has become a permanent piece of him.

In the beginning, he was like a moth to flame. Ada was strength in an otherwise collapsing world. He was naive back then, young and desperate for glory, and he believed that assisting her with her alleged mission would somehow bring him clout for having a hand in saving the world. Looking back, he can see it for what it was, but it doesn't detract from the way he feels about her. Leon foolishly believed that she truly had good intentions back then, but his obliviousness led to failure. He could admit that now.

Sherry was his success. She was the only achievement from Raccoon City that he had to show for and was, perhaps, his only pride to arise from this war on bioterrorism. Their relationship was unique. He had been a makeshift foster father to her and she remained in his life, unlike Ada and her fleeting nature. In another way, though, Ada was a constant in his life as well. Time and again, their paths crossed, and she left him behind every time because Ada didn't have a side. She never had and never would. She was in the fight for herself and nothing more. Winning or losing didn't seem to matter to her. At the end of the day, all that mattered was herself.

Ada Wong was poison in a pretty glass, a drink that he couldn't ever seem to set aside. It was an addiction, _she_ was an addiction, and nothing positive ever came out of such infatuation with anything. This was how it has always been and this was how it always would be. Ada would only ever care about one thing and that was _herself._

He suddenly feels sick.

"Ada, just stop."

Leon hates how desperate he sounds. His hand migrates to the grip of the pistol at his side and he watches Ada's loose clothing billow in the wind. Sherry's pale hair is now obscuring her face and Jake is shouting, but he can't hear a thing. Time seems to slow as his heart seizes in his chest and he realizes what he has to do. His handgun feels heavier than usual and his hands tremble as he holds it steady.

There's only one right thing to do and it's about damn time he did it.

"I'm sorry," he rasps, "Ada, I'm sorry."

Leon flinches as his finger curls around the trigger. He doesn't pull it, not _yet_, and he wonders if he has the strength to go through with it. Cognitively, he knows what needs to be done, but Leon can't be sure that his body won't betray him.

But suddenly Ada stumbles. Her knees give in and she collapses onto the ground with a movement so fluid and quick that he isn't sure he saw it. Leon doesn't understand what's happening because he doesn't think he pulled the fucking trigger, but Ada's laying on the ground and oh my fucking _god,_ there's blood sprayed across the damn roof.

He doesn't hear his weapon clatter against the cement when he drops it and rushes to Ada's side. He doesn't hear Sherry calling his name as she watches the scene unfold. He doesn't hear Jake's relieved sigh or the sound of heavy boots approaching from behind. Leon is only aware of one thing and it's Ada's glassy, lifeless gaze. Her dark eyes are heavily lidded and unseeing in the telltale stare of death, but he still lets out a sound that's a mix between a sob and a cough. Leon cups her face in his palm and finds that her warmth is already starting to fade.

There is no dramatic exit for Ada Wong—no breathless, final monologue or blood-slicked fingers desperately attempting to clutch at him as her consciousness fades. She doesn't give him that sly smile, doesn't tease him for the tears that fall down his face, doesn't say _anything_ at all because there's a fucking 12.7mm hole burrowed clean through her skull, a shot that ensures instant death.

"Captain," a deep voice calls, "It's done."

Leon has heard rumors about Nivans and his sharpshooting prowess, but he hasn't witnessed it until now. Had he cleanly executed anyone else, he might have been impressed by his abilities, but he can't feel anything but disgust for the soldier in the present. As he studies Ada's face, her expression slack in death, he thinks Piers Nivans is a fucking _monster._

He's spurred by rage when he rises to his feet and shoves the man in the chest. Piers glares at him as he staggers backwards, but he doesn't lose his footing and he doesn't raise his fist. Leon's seething, chest roughly rising and falling with his harsh breathing, and he can't decide if he hates himself or Piers more.

"Who the fuck do you think you are?" Leon spats. "Who the fuck gave you the right?"

Piers maintains his steely expression as he says, "Get a hold of yourself, Kennedy."

Leon pauses and takes in a deep breath because he knows Piers is right, but he doesn't want to give him a verbal confirmation of such. He looks away and down at the pool of blood that has radiated outward from beneath her and he feels Sherry come beside him. She rests her head on his shoulder and wraps an arm around him from behind.

"I'm sorry, Leon." She apologizes, her sympathy apparent in the tone of her voice, "I know how much—"

"What the _fuck_ are you apologizing for?" Jake interrupts her, grimacing as he tries to pull himself into a sitting position. "That was some good shit, Nivans. I take back everything I've ever said about you."

Piers snaps his head in Jake's direction and gives him a cold, judgmental once-over as he threateningly asks, "_You_ were talking shit about me?"

He clicks his tongue and angrily crosses his arms over his chest. They bicker with one another, or so Leon thinks because he can't focus on anything but the conflicting emotions that war within him. Ada is dead and he doesn't know if he should feel misery or relief because nothing has ever been black and white when she was involved. The game of cat and mouse is over, so he acknowledges that he _should_ feel relieved, but the hollowness inside of him has grown because Ada possessed a piece of him that can no longer be returned.

"Leon," Sherry gives his hand a gentle squeeze, "It's time to go."

After registering Sherry's words, he realizes that he hears the beat of helicopter blades in the distance. Leon looks back at Ada, wipes his sweaty palms off on the front of his pants, and lets out a shaky sigh. He tilts his head upwards, peers up at the sky, and begins to wonder.

Is this liberation or coercion?


	2. Chapter 2

Claire is at work when she receives the news, but she's so engrossed in the report she's reading that she doesn't give it the prompt attention it deserves. She scrolls through the images on the screen, feeling a pang in her chest at the sight of the wounded who survived the most recent bioterrorist attack. The outbreak in Ukraine has finally been contained on account of the efforts of the B.S.A.A., but there is more than a generous amount of wreckage for TerraSave to tend to. She knows it's going to be her this time around, that the destruction is complex enough for her to be persuaded into deploying she's almost looking forward to it. Claire has grown tired of sitting in the office and succumbing to the rote routine of day-to-day life.

She hears her phone vibrate against the surface of her desk, but she's too enthralled in viewing the exhaustive list of supplies that will be needed to piece Ukraine back together again. Once she reaches the bottom of it, she pauses, rubbing at her eyes that have grown bleary from staring too long at a computer screen. Claire slides her phone across the desk mat, yawning as she taps a button to wake it from sleep. She sees the text printed plain as day across the screen, but she still has to read it four times to truly take it in.

_We've eliminated Ada Wong._

Claire isn't sure what she should feel, but she's surprised by the twist in her guts. She thinks it's the word choice that irks her—'eliminated,' a word that seems too innocuous to truly connote the loss of a human life. It's the word choice of a soldier, the language of her older brother who has undoubtedly grown desensitized to the death he sees on the front lines. She doesn't blame him because she knows it's a defense mechanism and she doesn't make her distaste for the cold, militant language known.

She knows why Chris told her this. It's his roundabout, brotherly way of acknowledging her complex relationship with Leon. They're not a couple, not really much of _anything_ that can be clearly defined, but there's no doubt that something exists between them. Claire can read the spaces between Chris's writing, the secret that says _you should check on Kennedy._

It lingers in the air for a while. Claire doesn't breathe, doesn't think, doesn't do much of anything. Maybe the words had finally sunk in and stunned her to a surprising degree. Ada Wong was dead, presumably executed by her brother and his elite team of operatives, and the implications of such are huge. If Ada Wong is dead, then surely a piece of Leon S. Kennedy rotted beside her beneath the dirt.

She chews her lower lip in thought as she considers what to say. There is very little doubt in her mind that she won't end up on Leon's doorstep the minute her work is complete and she knows it'll be a grand tribulation. If Chris felt the need to inform her of Ada's passing, it was certain that Leon was equally aware. She wondered how he was taking it, if he felt relief or hopelessness, and a rational part of her decided it was the latter. Leon had always enjoyed the hunt for Ada, the thrilling chase she had led him through time and again while tugging on the reigns of his emotions.

Claire didn't know what she felt, but she didn't care much for the hollowness it elicited inside of her. It was, perhaps, some perverse form of sympathy that was entirely misdirected towards Leon. Ada Wong was dead, a human life was lost, a woman would no longer draw in a breath, and Claire couldn't seem to muster any genuine feelings about that. Chris had rubbed off on her more than she thought.

_Thank you for letting me know._

It's more than that. Claire's words are a promise to her brother, a declaration that she will check on Leon so that he isn't guilted into doing it himself. It's a burden that she's willing to bear for reasons that she can't explain; not coherently, anyway. She knows it's the ghosts of the past that pressure her to take on the responsibility and the allure of nostalgia for the man she once loved. It's toxic, self-destructive, pestilential, but it's a poison that she can't ever seem to set aside. Claire can call it out for what it is, but it doesn't deter it in any way.

She hasn't seen him in three months, she imagines, as she stands on the doorstep leading to his townhouse. The last time they met, the exchange ended with arguments and clenched fists in the way that they typically did, but that's just how it was when Leon S. Kennedy was involved. He was infuriating, incorrigible, contemptuous…and a _victim_, she had to remind herself. Chris blew off steam at the gym, Jill disappeared on a long hike for hours on end, and she herself took to obsessively cleaning every last inch of her apartment on days when her heart hurt. Leon's coping mechanism was the burn of alcohol as it ran down his throat, but she couldn't blame him because _none_ of them had a healthy way of dealing with their grief.

With a long sigh, she knocks again, pounding her knuckles so hard against the door that she nearly winces. She would give him a chance to allow her into his home, but whether he elected to do so or not wouldn't change the outcome. Claire had a key to his place and enough niggling empathy and determination to insert herself into his misery tonight whether he wanted it or not.

Claire counts slowly. She gives him a chance to begin this amiably. One minute, two minutes, three minutes, _four._

By the time her watch ticks off the fifth minute, she already has the key jammed into the lock and is pushing the door open. It's silent in the foyer when she steps inside and the overcast weather outside somehow makes it seem even more pathetic than it already is. Leon's home, she knows it, and she tells herself that she can't be angry with him for being petulant.

She finds him sprawled out on the couch, aimlessly staring at the ceiling above. The smell of alcohol is so pungent that she can nearly taste it in the air, but it's not like the observation surprises her in anyway. It's always like this, the same song and dance, the same argument with the same empty promise that he'll change his ways. She's not going to try to sober him today. No, Claire is here on a welfare check—nothing more, nothing less.

"Leon."

She says it with as much softness as she can manage because she assumes he can't handle sharp speech right now. He doesn't acknowledge her, but she knows he heard her.

"I came to check up on you," she explains without prompt, "Because I heard about what happened."

His gaze wanders. She sees the flicker of his blue irises as they dart to her, back to the ceiling, over to her, and upwards once more.

"You never cared about her," he suddenly rasps, "So why are you pretending to care now?"

Claire sighs and leans against the doorway for the strength and support that she lacks when he's being this way.

"You're right." She tells him. "I don't give a fuck about Ada. I'm here because I care about _you._"

Leon doesn't say much of anything for a while. He lays there and Claire watches the rise and fall of the hand that rests atop his chest as it moves with the tide of his breathing.

"You know," he begins, his warning tone suggesting that his words most certainly will cut her, "You never understood our relationship. You never could and you can't now because Ada is fucking dead and I blame your brother for half of it."

"Don't bring your inferiority complex into this," she counters, her words like a weapon that's far more lethal than the sharp edge to his tone, "Chris has nothing to do with it."

Leon laughs humorlessly and she knows she's wounded him. Claire isn't apologetic for it. She overcame that mistake a long time ago. Brutality is what Leon needs because her hurting, her pleading, her heartbreak isn't enough to get through to him.

"You know it was his obedient little lapdog who slaughtered her, right? Right in front of me. I wonder if he had the clearance or if this was part of your brother's petty vendetta against me."

He doesn't mean it. She knows he doesn't mean it. This isn't him speaking, it's the whiskey and vodka and whatever else is strewn across the floor.

"That's stupid." She bluntly says. "You're being stupid."

"Yeah," he sits upright and glares at her, "I'm just stupid unlike perfect Claire Redfield and her perfect fucking brother. Just a couple of heroes, aren't you?"

Claire clicks her tongue, tells him, "I'm not doing this with you."

"I didn't invite you." He waves towards the direction she came from. "You're more than welcome to leave."

"You're allowed to grieve, Leon." She gestures towards the glass bottles littered across the floor. "But it has to come to an end at some point. You can't just wallow in self-pity over a woman who didn't even love you."

"You don't understand what our relationship was, Claire."

"God, Leon," she's getting frustrated even though she knows she shouldn't, "There was never a relationship! It was only you and your deranged obsession over a woman who played you like a fiddle and you always let her get away with it."

"Fuck you." He falls back against the couch. "I don't see you with a man wrapped around your finger. What the fuck do you know?"

"I know unrequited love when I see it," she says, "After all, I loved you once."

Leon lets out a cruel laugh. He sits upright again, looks her in the eyes, and she can see the flames of the demon lurking inside of him.

"Keep throwing it in my face," he hisses, "See what happens."

"I'm not throwing it in your face." She calmly responds. "I'm just telling you that I can empathize with you."

There's a period of mind numbing silence that she can only hope is sobering for him.

"Why are you here, Claire?" He eventually asks with a defeated sigh.

"Because I care about you," she plainly states, "And you've already pushed away everyone else who once did."

"I don't want you here."

"I know."

"Why don't you go check on your fucking brother instead? I bet he's drinking, but you don't give him shit about it. It's okay if _Chris_ does it, but when I do it—"

"Stop." It's delivered in a more terse manner than she intended. "It's different and you know it. Chris knows when to stop, Leon. He doesn't have a disease."

He rises from the couch and moves close to her. Leon paces around her in the same menacing manner of a shark, but she doesn't fear him. In fact, she might be the only one who doesn't.

"A disease." He snorts. "Poor Leon, he has a _disease._ You can't blame him for being so stupid because he can't help himself."

Claire sighs and massages her temples to relieve some of the tension inside of her.

"Just go to bed, Leon."

"Why?" He looks her up and down. "You want me to fuck you like a slut for old times' sake?"

"Get over yourself." She spats. "Go to sleep because you're drunk and don't need to embarrass yourself any more than you already have."

Leon's fuming, she thinks, but he doesn't speak. He glowers at her with a wild look in his eyes and she can tell his teeth are clenched by the way his jaw is set. She doesn't back down, but instead meets his scowl with a flat, unwavering stare of her own.

"Fine." He surrenders. "The heroic Claire Redfield gets what she wants as usual."

The force with which he slams his bedroom door shut causes the entire house to rattle on its foundation. Claire stands there for a while, willingly numb because she knows if she lets herself feel anything at all, she'll falter. She focuses on breathing, holds her eyes closed, tries to find center or whatever it is that Moira talks about when she's trying to coach her on relaxation techniques. Claire doesn't find it, so she engages in what she does best. She picks up the bottles off the floor, sweeps up the shattered glass, straightens up the mess he's made of the kitchen, and eventually falls asleep on his couch.

She doesn't know how she finds rest on that dirty couch that reeks of a distillery, but she realizes that she somehow managed to when she's being stirred awake in the middle of the night by the gentle pass of fingers through her hair. Claire opens her eyes and she finds Leon kneeled beside her, blue eyes wet with remorse as he plays with her hair that's draped over the arm of the couch.

"I'm sorry." He whispers, his voice hoarse. "I'm so sorry, Claire."

"I know."

She's just going through the motions. They've been here before a thousand times and she knows they'll recite it a thousand times again. Leon rehearses his shitty apologies every time she's stupid enough to give a fuck about him. He takes in a shaky breath, too choked up to breathe properly through his nose. He's crying because he _always_ cries during this part.

"I'm an asshole."

He knows what she's going to say, but she does it anyway.

"I know."

"I don't deserve you."

"You don't."

"I should stop drinking."

"You should."

And then he hovers over her, leans in close and brushes his chapped lips across the smooth surface of her forehead.

"It's always just you," he mumbles, "It's always been just you."

Even though they've done this a million times, she still can't figure out what that line means.

"Go to sleep, Leon."

"Alright."

Claire doesn't know who will hate themselves more in the morning, but she suspects that it might be her.


	3. Chapter 3

It was times like these that made Piers forget why he joined the B.S.A.A. in the first place. The last three months had consisted of nothing more than one deployment after another and he had hardly gotten a chance to breathe before being shipped off to Ukraine in order to tie up loose ends. Initially, he wasn't so vexed about the assignment, but once he arrived, he found that there were plenty of things to hate about Ukraine—the cold, the forests, the infuriating language barrier between him and the locals, the way his boots blistered his feet while on patrol, and his Captain's pissy attitude. Perhaps Chris was rubbing off on him.

"Hey, Finn." Marco speaks over the sound of leaves crunching beneath their feet as they traverse the half-dead forest. "You hear that Captain's sister is here? I heard she works for TerraSave."

Piers, who had taken point, hears Finn's footfalls cease.

"No shit?" There's a pause. "You think she's as ripped as he is?"

He hears Marco snicker, but doesn't particularly care to get involved. Piers had heard before that Chris had a sister, but he'd never personally met her. It was a topic of discussion that arose often during Alpha team's down time and a surefire way to put Chris in an even worse mood than he typically was at baseline. In a way, Piers couldn't fault the guys for their filthy behavior because not much could be expected from a bunch of sexually frustrated, testosterone-fueled young men. Personally, he wasn't curious about her in the slightest.

"That would be kinda hot, not gonna lie." Finn confesses. "I'm a sucker for a strong woman."

"That's because you're a cuck." Piers snaps, earning the surprise of his comrades. "Keep your eyes peeled. We're hunting B.O.W.s, not women."

The comeback Finn huffs beneath his breath doesn't go unnoticed by Piers, but he doesn't care to acknowledge it. The sun is starting to sink beneath the horizon and the sooner he completes his rounds, the sooner he can go the fuck to sleep and mark another day off on his nonexistent deployment calendar.

Static breaks through the silence of the radio and he hears a broken voice call out.

"_Alpha team—what's your location?"_

Piers can't tell if it's the poor reception in this shithole country that makes it seem this way, but he thinks he detects panic in the contact's voice.

"1LT Nivans reporting." He calmly says. "Rose, Macauley, and myself are about four kilometers east of Camp Guardian."

"_Camp Guardian has been compromised by B.O.W.s. Your coordinates are closest. Double time it."_

"Fuck." Piers looks back at his subordinates before breaking into a sprint.

His boots strike hard against the ground, but he's suddenly oblivious to the way the movement exacerbates the blisters that have formed on his feet. Piers hears blood beat in his eardrums as he takes in a sharp breath. There's a stitch forming in his side and the way his rucksack is bouncing along the length of his back is bothersome, but it doesn't deter his speed. Camp Guardian belongs to TerraSave and was likely to be decimated.

He knows he can clear a mile in six in a half minutes and estimates that the adrenaline rush will likely shave off a few seconds. Piers estimates that they'll reach Camp Guardian in roughly sixteen minutes, give or take thirty or so seconds, but that somehow seems like forever. He knows this camp is smaller than the others and he assumes that whatever is parading through its walls is likely to kill at least half of its inhabitants before they arrive.

"What do you think it is?" Finn calls out, breathless as he attempts to keep up.

"Doesn't matter!" Piers shouts back. "Hurry up!"

Time seems to trickle slowly through its hourglass even as he spots the low sandbag walls of the camp in the distance. He doesn't hear any signs of combat coming from ahead, no screams of the dying as B.O.W.s tear through their flesh or animalistic screeches of those who have turned, and it worries him. Piers thinks they should be able to hear something, _see_ something, but the camp seems oddly still and serene.

He hops the wall with ease, the slap of his soles against the earth creating a small cloud of disrupted dirt. Piers can't see anything around the tall tents that billow gently in the breeze and he rounds one quickly, entering the middle of the camp. He whips around, searching in each direction, but there's nothing to be found—no B.O.W.s, no gore, no _anything._ Something feels incredibly amiss and Piers doesn't know what to make of it. He wonders if the report was false, but as he circles around the back of one tent, he finally sees it.

Piers hasn't personally encountered one before, but he knows it's a revenant based on anatomy alone. It's a grotesque thing, one with more limbs than a humanoid creature should possess. He thinks it seems as though two bodies had been messily sewn together, and though he's facing it from the side, he suspects it might have two heads. He doesn't think it sees him given the way it's staggering about in an aimless fashion, and when he looks to the left to ensure there are no others nearby, he sees _her._

Her eyes meet his, a bright blue that stands out from the dark fluid that has been sprayed across her face, and she brings a finger to her lips, wordlessly commanding him to remain silent. Piers doesn't know who she is, but she grips the massive combat knife that she's wielding like this isn't her first time holding a weapon. He isn't sure what to do, doesn't know if he should step in because she's not wearing any B.S.A.A.-issued attire and he's positive that there are no women amongst the teams that have been deployed this time around.

Piers can hardly believe his eyes when she moves, crouching low to the ground and maneuvering towards the damn thing with a soundless step. Her dark hair is mussed, shorter tendrils of it escaping the loose tie that binds it together, and the setting sun paints her with an intense orange glow. The woman's hand twitches, hands caked with blood and soil, and she suddenly lunges at the revenant from behind.

She plunges her knife into the creature's back and digs her knees into it as it collapses onto the ground. There is no mercy as she twists the blade, popping a pustule that he can't see and showering both herself and her surroundings with the foul yellow fluid within it. The revenant convulses, lets out an anguished wail, and crumples up in a lifeless heap below her weight. Piers doesn't know what he's feeling when she stands and faces him, slinging the gore from her blade and splattering it against the dirt. He doesn't know what he's feeling when she rakes her hand through her hair, directing it away from the soft curves of her pale face.

Piers has absolutely no idea what he's feeling when she looks at him and he thinks she looks wild, ruthless, _beautiful._

"That was the last one." She suddenly says, regarding the corpse beside her with a harsh look.

"Nivans!"

Marco and Finn are barreling in their direction, faces red from exertion as their chests heave for air.

"Someone...already…" Finn leans forward, attempting to catch his breath, and he stiffens into an upright position when he sees her.

"Someone already...killed them all."

He notices the corpse and looks at the woman.

"You killed them?" Marco asks, voice elevated with surprise.

She just nods and points to a tent nestled between several others with a filthy hand.

"Everyone's in there."

Piers watches her slip the knife into a holster that's secured on her thigh and swallows hard, his mouth suddenly dry.

"Were there...any casualties?" He asks as Marco and Finn head towards the tent.

"No," she looks up at him and flashes her teeth with a bright smile, "Thank god."

"Thanks to you." He says and she shrugs, wiping her hands off on the front of her coat that has already been ruined.

"Thanks to a lot of things." She humbly admits. "I got lucky."

He doesn't know why he's compelled to learn her name, but he is.

"Piers." He randomly says, holding out a hand to greet her. She studies it for a second before placing her hand in his and he thinks the size compliments his well.

"Claire."

It's a name that suits her.

"It's nice to meet you, Claire."

He can't tear his eyes away from her even as she heads towards the tent with the wellbeing of her camp in mind. Piers doesn't know who the hell she is, but it's hard to keep her off his mind as he makes contact with control to report the situation. Alpha team is instructed to remain at Camp Guardian for the night and he thinks that maybe Ukraine isn't as bad as he thought.

Some hours later, once the hysteria has worn off and the moon is high in the sky, he finds her again. Piers finishes walking the perimeter of the camp, peering into the surrounding darkness that's eerily illuminated by the crackle of the bonfire nearby. There's nothing as far as the eye can see and he hopes the invasion was a fluke rather than a sign of a nearby swarm of monsters.

"That was fucking reckless, Claire. You know better than that."

It's Chris's voice that he hears echoing through the camp and he moves closer to listen.

"I saved lives, Chris. Why would I prioritize my life over theirs?"

Piers is surprised by the bite of her words. Few have the gall to stand up to his Captain, but he's not particularly surprised that she's one of them because he suspects Claire doesn't fear much of anything at all.

"It doesn't matter. You should have waited for back-up."

"Give me a break, Chris. You're the pot calling the kettle black here. I can recall _dozens_ of times in which you've done stupid things. How about running off to a foreign country and risking not only your life, but those of others _too_, to save one woman? Does that sound familiar?"

"That was different. You have no right to br—"

"Captain," Piers chooses to interrupt, stepping out from behind one of the tents, "Maybe you should—"

"Stay out of it, Nivans," Chris growls, "I'll reprimand my baby sister however I please."

Claire. Claire _Redfield_. How the hell did he not piece it together sooner? Piers blames it on the adrenaline, his lack of sleep, the jetlag, pretty much everything aside from his own stupidity. Now that he sees them standing beside one another, he can see the physical resemblances between them, like the way they both favor the left side of their mouth when they smirk.

"Fair enough." He concedes, too shocked to put up much of an argument. Piers opts to relocate near the bonfire where Finn, Marco, and Reid are chatting away. When he arrives, Marco tosses him a beer that he surprisingly accepts. The three of them exchange looks with one another because Piers Nivans _never_ drinks on the job.

"We're exiled to this shithole for how much longer?" Marco asks, burying his face in the palm of his hand.

"Eleven fuckin' days." Finn answers with a groan. "Eleven _long_ fuckin' days."

Marco idly tosses a stick into the fire as Piers cracks open his beer. It tastes like ass and isn't quite cold or warm and he hates it, but it'll do. He chokes it down as he watches Reid tune an acoustic guitar in the firelight.

"Where did you get that?" Piers asks and Reid shrugs.

"It was just laying here. Figured the owner doesn't care."

The four of them are quiet as they sit near the fire, listening to the faint popping of the firewood and the soothing sound of Reid's gentle strumming. It's not often that they unanimously agree on anything, but they discover that the consensus is that Ukraine sucks. Piers pulls his scarf up higher, just below his jaw, and he huddles a little closer to the fire. Ukraine sucks and it's cold as shit.

He hears footsteps approach, but he's too numb from the cold to move. Piers remains hunched over as he enjoys the warmth of the fire, but he sees her enter his periphery. Claire _Redfield_ takes a seat beside him and extends her arms, putting her bare hands near the flame for warmth. She's cleaner this time, wears her hair down, and is swathed in even more layers than she was before.

"Are you boys up for sharing some of that beer?" She inquires with a sly grin that Piers assumes no red-blooded man could ever say no to.

"I reckon we aren't allowed to say no to our Captain's sister regardless." Finn teases as Marco passes her a beer.

She takes a generous gulp and asks, "That obvious, huh?"

Piers can't believe Finn figured it out within a matter of seconds and his dumb ass couldn't tell until it was explicitly spelled out right before his face. Finn laughs and Marco shakes his head.

"Woulda given you one anyway." He insists. "It's not a problem."

Reid's still strumming away and Piers wonders if one of them is going to try to make a move on her. He doesn't know why the thought of it makes him feel sick to his stomach, but it does, and he watches them all with a scrutinizing eye.

"You ever been to Ukraine before?" Marco asks her and she shakes her head.

"I imagine you've been to all kinds of shitholes with TerraSave." Finn muses aloud. "What's the worst place you've been?"

Claire gives it a thought. She rests her warmed hands in her lap, clutching her beer between them, and she worries her lip between her teeth while she internally debates her answer.

"September 1998," she quietly announces, "Raccoon City."

Piers nearly chokes on his beer and Reid's steady strumming comes to an abrupt halt.

"_You_ were in Raccoon City?" Reid inquires, returning to his guitar once she nods in confirmation.

"No wonder you're such a badass. Took out all those damn revenants single-handedly." Finn comments and Piers wishes he'd shut the hell up.

Claire laughs it off and doesn't volunteer any further details. They chat about a variety of things, most of which are nonsense, until Marco announces he's ready to head to bed. He blames his exhaustion on all the running they'd done and Finn agrees.

"I'll see you guys in the morning." Finn announces, "Nice meeting ya, Claire."

Reid stays for a while. The three of them don't speak and instead just listen to Reid's one man show. He plays a few more songs before setting the guitar aside, presumably where he found it.

"I think that's it for me too." He nods to both Piers and Claire, rubbing his hands together as he leaves the warmth of the fire and mumbles, "Fuck Ukraine."

Piers is distinctly aware of his heart as it beats like a kickdrum in his chest. He doesn't speak and keeps his eyes trained on the flames as they greedily devour the wood he offers to the fire. It's quiet, almost uncomfortably so, but he glances over at Claire and the pensive look on her face tells him he should keep his damn mouth shut. A few more minutes pass and he wonders if he should ask if she's alright. She has this dazed look in her eyes that he's seen before, one that never means anything good, and it bothers him. Claire doesn't move. She just sits there, clutching her empty beer.

"So," the sudden sound of her voice startles him, "I heard you assassinated Ada Wong."

Her choice of words makes him cringe. She isn't wrong, but the word seems awfully cruel when it comes out of a mouth as pretty as hers.

"What a reputation to precede me." He laughs bitterly. "'The guy who killed Ada Wong.'"

Claire twists her body in order to face him.

"For the record, I think it's a hell of an accomplishment," he feels his heart palpitate, "But I've heard _other_ things about you too."

He doesn't know what that means, why she says it like this.

"Oh yeah?" He shifts uncomfortably.

"Yeah." She doesn't hesitate. "From Chris, of course."

"I'm surprised he talks about me." He admits. "Didn't know we were like that."

"From what he's told me, he respects you a lot."

"Respects what?" He laughs. "The fact that I do whatever he asks? How I'm the only one who puts up with his temper tantrums? My good looks?"

He's joking with the last part, but Claire says, "Well, he never mentioned your looks."

Piers wants to burrow his head in the dirt.

"But Jill did."

She's staring directly at his face when he turns away from the fire to look at her and there's something intense in her stare. Her eyes are glimmering like shattered glass and he remembers that faraway look in her eyes from moments before. Piers is overwhelmed by Claire Redfield and he thinks he wants to put her back together again, because something has certainly damaged her before.

"Jill, huh?" He plays it off as best he can despite this nervousness that makes him want to vomit. "What did Jill say?"

"She said you had the most beautiful eyes she had ever seen."

Piers swallows thickly.

"And what do you think?" He asks, hoping she'll blame it on the beer.

Claire tucks her hair behind her ear and smiles.

"Well," she says, "I think she's right."

Piers is dizzy when he looks back at the fire because he doesn't think he can handle the way she's looking at him. He can't explain what Claire does to him, but fuck, he wants to make her laugh. Someone like her should never have to wear that thousand yard stare.

"Interesting." He manages to say. "I've heard things about you too."

"Oh?"

Piers laughs, lowers his head to hide the redness of his cheeks.

"The guys had a running bet, you know. They all thought you'd be just as ugly as Chris."

She laughs and he likes it.

"And what do you think?" She echoes his words from before and he doesn't want to blame it on the beer.

"Well," he smirks, "I think you're the most beautiful woman I've ever seen."

Suddenly, Ukraine doesn't seem quite so cold to either of them. The fire threatens to burn them and they both share a look.

"I imagine you don't see many women in your line of work." Claire hypothesizes as she rises to her feet to escape the sweltering heat.

"True," he confesses, "But I still know a pretty woman when I see one."

There's a pause.

"Objectively, of course." He adds.

Claire forces a polite smile.

"Of course." She says and she regards him with this look that confuses the hell out of him.

"Sleep well tonight, Piers." She finally says with a small wave.

"You too."

He wants to throw himself in the fire as he watches her walk away.


	4. Chapter 4

After nightfall, the camp smells like smoke and pine needles. It reminds Claire of her childhood, of times in which Chris would build a bonfire in the yard behind their parents' house. They had no business drinking at that age, but they _did,_ and they'd laugh and cry together about their rotten luck. It was the Redfield curse, they had decided back then. If they didn't have bad luck, they'd have none at all, but at least they had each other.

Claire knew what suffering was like. She learned it at a young age and sorrow never truly left her once it came. It settled someplace in her chest, nestled up between two ribs like it needed shelter, and it quickly became a part of her. Her sorrow was something that just _was_. She learned to live with it as it followed her through life like a starving stray animal. Claire found that she was never truly alone in life because it was always there, sulking nearby, waiting for her to give it attention.

It wasn't until after Raccoon City that sorrow put her on the pills. She can't pinpoint when it happened, when it managed to take over and win her lifelong battle against it. It was an insidious progression, one that inevitably blindsided her on an idle Friday night while she was in the bath. She can recall looking down at the razor and thinking how easy it would be to end her life as though it were a decision as casual as choosing what to wear to work the next morning. Claire could have died right there in that tub, but she knew better.

The thought was disturbing enough to persuade her to seek professional help because there was no way in hell Chris was going to take well to his sister having suicidal thoughts. She remembers sitting in a psychiatrist's dark office, nervously fidgeting in a chair as the man stared at his computer monitor. Not once did he look her in the eye—he rattled off questions as though he was speaking to an entity inside of the computer.

"On a scale of one to ten," he had said, eyes following words on the screen, "How would you rate your depression?"

What the fuck kind of question was that? Looking back, Claire still didn't know how to answer it. She had thrown out some arbitrary number—seven, she thinks—and he had questioned her about suicidal ideation. The man asked her if she had thoughts of _killing_ herself and still didn't look her in the eye.

"No," she had lied with a breathy laugh, "That's ridiculous."

The pills didn't take it all away. In fact, she had been on them for so long that she can't even recall what they did for her in the first place, but she didn't have the guts to stop them. Claire couldn't put them down because she desperately feared that, if she did, she'd someday look at the gun on her bedside table and realize just how easy it is to die. She wondered if Chris pondered the same throughout Jill's alleged death.

Claire finds Chris alone, huddled near a campfire. In the faint flicker of the firelight, it's difficult to recognize her brother in him. Chris had his own sorrow, a different flavor of misery that Claire couldn't speak for. She had lost people, but not nearly to the extent Chris had. When Jill threw herself out that damn window to save Chris's life, Claire was certain that she'd lose her brother to something more than his newfound obsession with weights and wires. She expected the call to come any day, one that declared her brother deceased as a result of a self-inflicted gunshot wound. She was grateful that it never came.

Chris doesn't pay her any mind as she approaches. He simply stokes the fire and keeps his attention focused on the flames as she takes a seat beside him.

"I'm sorry for being an ass yesterday." He says and she knows he's too embarrassed to face her.

"It's fine."

Claire hadn't dwelled on his behavior and didn't take it to heart. Chris was never a man of many words and very rarely revealed how he felt. His stoicism was a trait that developed very quickly after their parents passed away and she had gotten used to it. Chris was a reserved man, but he was still her older brother, and when he reprimanded her for risking her life to save others, she knew what he truly said—_god, Claire, you scared the shit out of me._

"No, it's not," he sighs so hard that Claire wonders if it hurt, "I have a lot going on and I shouldn't take it out on you."

The fact that he shares this detail surprises her. It's another phrase that he speaks in their shared foreign language that Claire very rarely hears. He wants her advice.

"Jill keeps…" He pauses, leaning back into his chair as he crosses his arms over his chest. "She keeps asking me to convince them to put her back in the field."

Claire doesn't quite understand the issue. She watches him in the firelight and waits for him to continue, noting the hint of grey at the edges of his sideburns and the tired, sullen look to his eyes. Chris is getting old, _she's_ getting old, and Claire thinks it's only a matter of time before one of them truly dies and never comes back.

"So?" She narrows her eyes and skeptically studies Chris's face. "I'm sure she's bored."

"Maybe, but…"

She knows what this is. Chris wants her to validate his overprotectiveness because he's terrified. If Jill is allowed to do field work once again, the likelihood of her dying increases exponentially, and Chris can't risk losing her again. She won't be allowed to serve beside him any longer because of the conflict of interest. Chris, too, has shown that he'd risk lives for the sake of Jill Valentine and neither can be trusted not to do it again.

"Chris," she smiles to preemptively soothe the sting of the harsh words she's about to speak, "Jill isn't the kind of woman who can just sit at home all day."

"She doesn't have to. She can—"

"You can't shelter her forever."

Chris looks at her and she knows he's hurt. His expression softens and the look in his eyes threatens to break her heart. Claire is dishing him the type of love that he needs; not only for his sake, but Jill's as well.

"You know I can't…" He clenches his eyes closed as though the thought is painful.

_You know I can't handle losing her again._

"I know, Chris."

They don't touch one another often, but Claire reaches across the space between them and takes his hand in hers. He stiffens as her body comes into contact with his, but she laces her fingers between his anyway. Chris's hands are dry, rough, and callused in comparison to her own. They're the hands of a soldier, not the brother who raised her.

"We're all putting our lives on the line for this fight." She says softly. "If you can do it, then so can she. Jill didn't 'die' because she was reckless. She died because she loved you."

She feels the tough pad of his thumb graze over the back of her knuckles. He doesn't speak for a while and Claire doesn't pressure him to do such. After a while, he removes his hand from hers and rubs at his temples in exasperation.

"Fuck," he abruptly says, "Claire, I just…"

He lets out a laugh, one that she suspects might have been used to disguise a sob given the way his voice cracks.

"I really love her."

"I know," she quickly responds, "But you can't hold her back. Jill's good at what she does. She has just as much right to be here as you do."

She's almost startled when he nods and admits that she's right. They're quiet again and Claire breathes in deeply, taking in the sting of the frigid air and the smoke that tickles the inside of her nose. It's liberating in a way and it's almost as though it washes away the awkward heaviness that the conversation left behind.

"How's, uh…" He nervously scratches at the back of his neck. "How's Kennedy?"

Claire hates the feeling of guilt that surfaces when she asks. She had nearly talked herself into refusing this deployment for his sake, but the rational part of her won the battle. Does Chris judge her for leaving him behind? Surely he'd judge her for debating not leaving him behind.

"As you'd expect." She finally answers.

Chris isn't a stranger to Leon's addiction, but he still lowers his head in a grim apology.

"It's fine, but," she doesn't really know why it matters, but she says it anyway, "You didn't tell me that Piers was the one who took out Ada."

He's silent for a moment as he peers around them as if to ensure they're out of earshot.

"Yeah. He's the only one I can depend on."

It's a backhanded compliment, but it astonishes her. Chris hasn't ever trusted anyone but Jill and it makes her wonder what kind of person Piers is to earn such favor from her brother.

"Wow," she mockingly gasps in amazement, "Such high praise from _Chris Redfield_?"

Chris merely shrugs and says, "He's my best man."

She feels her cheeks burn at the sudden realization that she wants to get to know him. Claire tells herself that it's because she's never known anyone to impress her brother and has nothing to with the looks that Jill had so highly praised. She was only being objective when she acknowledged that Jill was right. It wasn't like she was coming onto him the night before.

Claire blames the Redfield curse when the group of men soon approach; namely, Piers Nivans. She blames it again when he takes the seat beside hers.

"What a coincidence," Finn gestures towards her and Chris, "Both of the Redfields in one place."

Chris shifts in his seat and Claire finds it curious. Is he nervous?

"Claire," Marco cooes her name in a way that makes her nauseated, "Can you tell us stories? Captain here never does."

She stares at him blankly for a moment. Both Finn and Marco appear eager, but Piers narrows his eyes as his attention shifts between them and Chris. She half expects Piers to bark at them in Chris's defense, but he doesn't.

"What kind of stories?" She asks, not quite sure what they're after.

"Well," Finn strokes his chin in thought, "What's the worst shit he ever did growing up?"

Claire laughs, looks at Chris from the corner of her eye, and shakes her head.

"He left me in the zombie apocalypse by running off to Europe without even telling me."

It wasn't quite what they were after, she thinks, based on the way their faces fall. Claire thinks about shoving her foot in her mouth because they were likely looking for blackmail material, like stories about her walking in on him jerking it or his first girlfriend.

"Sorry," she suddenly says, "That's probably not what you meant."

"You mean Raccoon City, right?" Finn asks as he looks her in the eyes. "You said you were there, right? What was it like?"

She's talked about this about a thousand times with her therapist. A thousand and one can't hurt.

"Well," she openly glares at Chris, "My dickhead brother wasn't answering his phone for days, so I left my dorm during _midterms_ to go to Raccoon and find his sorry ass."

Chris sighs because he's heard this about a thousand times while she was drunk and angry.

"But, come to find out, the fucking zombie apocalypse had started and he _knew_ something was up, but he ran off to Europe anyway."

"For shame, Captain." Marco scolds. "I thought you were better than that."

Chris rolls his eyes and Alpha team seems surprised that he's capable of such a human reaction.

"So," Finn begins to ask as he moves towards the edge of his chair in anticipation, "What happened when you got there?"

If she focuses hard enough, Claire swears she can still feel the way the rain in Raccoon City made her clothes cling to her skin. She remembers the way the blood smeared across that gas station floor glistened in the light, how she thought she'd never seen so much blood in her life, how she had distracted that cop and cost him his fucking life. They're memories that haunt her, ones that call home in the middle of the night.

"I stopped at a gas station just outside of the city." She recounts. "I knew something wasn't right, but I went inside anyway."

She squeezes her eyes shut and swallows hard. It's probably for the best that she leaves the cop's death out of it.

"You know Leon? Leon Kennedy?" She asks.

Everyone looks to Piers and he counters with an icy glare of his own. Their gazes linger for a moment before Reid quietly acknowledges that they're all loosely acquainted.

"There was a zombie in the back." Technically not a lie. "I was trying to get out, but I ran into him by chance. He was entering as I was running for my life."

Claire wants to tell them that they'd never recognize him, that Leon wasn't always the drunken asshole that he is today. She wants to tell them about his bravery and the way he refused to leave her and Sherry behind, about how he used to maybe _love_ her once upon a time, but she doesn't.

"He was just a street cop back then," she tells them, "Fresh out of the police academy. He had no idea what the hell he was doing, but neither did I. Hell, I don't think anyone did back then."

"So you've known him for a while, Captain?" Finn asks and Chris sighs as he murmurs, "Unfortunately."

"It was the T-Virus, right?" Piers suddenly speaks up and Claire finds that she's beneath his gaze, a realization that makes her inexplicably antsy.

"Yeah, it was. Apparently, Umbrella was operating in the mountains nearby and the virus somehow contaminated the city's water supply." She elbows Chris hard in the side. "Chris _knew_ and had killed some of the fuckers already, but he didn't think it'd be important to tell his sister."

"Seriously?" Marco's brow rises in surprise as he stares Chris down.

"There was a lot going on at the time." He defends himself. "I didn't think about it. I had no idea it'd get in the water."

"So what happened after that?" Finn urges her to continue.

"We took shelter in the precinct because I _thought_ Chris would be there. As you know, he wasn't, and I had to find out from his fucking coworker who I was later forced to put down out of mercy once he turned."

"You were a cop?" Finn asks in awe and Chris only grunts in response.

"You seriously never told them about this?" Claire asks incredulously. "Chris, what the fuck?"

"It never came up." He grumbles, passively waving his hand. "It's not relevant anymore."

"A lot of people who you probably know where involved back then." Claire reveals. "Leon Kennedy, Sherry Birkin, Jill Valentine, Barry Burton, Ada Wong…"

She wonders if she should have mentioned the bitch because everyone looks to Piers again the very moment she does. He seems uncomfortable with the attention and she can see the subtle clench of his jaw. She wonders if Piers is like her brother, if he remembers each kill he's made by the notches in his shoulder.

"You knew Ada Wong _too_?" Finn questions. "Damn."

He looks at Piers again and Claire feels sorry for him.

"We weren't close." She explains, hoping that the revelation will ease whatever is troubling Piers. "Leon and I met her in Raccoon City. Well, really, Leon did. I was with Sherry most of the time. Leon and Ada, they…"

They _what_? What was she supposed to say? Ada batted her pretty eyelashes and Leon fell for her? Ada claimed to be a part of the FBI and he was head over heels? Ada's been ruining her life since '98 and she could never do anything about it?

"They got close back then." She finally decides to leave it at that.

"Dude," Finn points accusingly at Piers, "You killed Kennedy's girlfriend."

Claire doesn't miss the way Piers's fist trembles as he grips the arm of his chair.

"Finn," he hisses, "Shut the fuck up."

Finn looks like he wants to speak, but Claire steps in.

"She was always playing both sides. Ada killed a lot of people and I'm positive that Nivans saved a lot of lives by doing what he did."

When his eyes meet hers, she swears she can see relief staring back at her from behind the firelight that dances in those amber irises, and she thinks Piers Nivans might be different from the other soldiers she's met. Claire is familiar with his pensive silence and the tired slope of his shoulders because she knows what hurt is like, and once she has enough alcohol in her system to embarrass herself, she decides she wants to get to know his kind of hurt.

"Do you ever think about giving it all up?"

He's the last one to leave, beginning to rise from his chair when she disturbs the silence. Piers halts mid-movement, hands still gripping the arms of his chair, and he slowly lowers himself back down into it. He doesn't initially speak, his eyes trained on some seemingly insignificant point in the distance, and Claire starts to feel uncomfortable.

"Sorry," she cringes at herself, "I shouldn't have—"

"I do." He looks at her with a wry smile. "I like to think it's natural to feel that way with this type of work."

Claire wonders if he means it or if he's simply being polite on her behalf.

"Watching people suffer gets exhausting sometimes." He explains. There's a pensive look on his face as his voice grows quiet, "Being the source of the suffering is even worse."

"Piers, Ada was…"

"It's not just Ada, Claire."

His voice is soft now, like an apology, and Claire thinks it might break her heart.

"I've lost a lot of people." Claire tells him. "Sometimes as a result of my own fault."

She laughs a little, the sound splintered by something wet in her throat.

"Sometimes I've had to put them down myself."

They both say nothing. Claire thinks she should probably be ashamed of herself in the morning until Piers starts to rifle through one of his pockets.

"You still see Kennedy?"

The question catches her off guard because she doesn't know what he's trying to imply.

"Sometimes." She shrugs.

Piers reaches across the distance between them with his fist curled into a ball. It hovers above her lap expectantly, waiting for her to reach out, and she offers an upturned palm. She feels something heavy land in her hand and she curiously studies the necklace he's dropped into her palm, running her fingers along the front of the cross. Claire never would have taken him for a particularly pious man, but she supposed she didn't know much of anything about him.

"Will you…" He clenches his eyes closed, breathes in deep as though his words are sharp in his throat. "Give that to him?"

"Sure."

"I took it off her," he explains, "After I…"

She doesn't know why she feels tears sting at the back of her eyes, so she swats at them with the back of her wrist to keep them from falling.

"He'll appreciate this." Claire tangles the rope of the necklace between her fingers, allowing the cross to dangle against her palm. "It was really thoughtful of you, Piers."

He shrugs and looks away.

"They're still people," he says, "Someone always gets left behind."

"I guess everyone has someone." Claire muses as she worries the cord between her fingers.

"Mostly everyone."

Something flashes in his eyes.

"Do you have someone to leave behind?" She shyly asks.

He gives her a cockeyed smile, "Not really."

"For what it's worth," she looks down at her feet and trails the toe of her boot through the dirt, "I'd mourn you."

The way he's looking at her leaves her timorous. Maybe she could take it back and blame it on the booze.

"I'd mourn you too." He confesses to both her and himself.

Claire can't help but wonder what it would be like to be Piers Nivans's person and she laments the fact that maybe, under different circumstances, she could have been the one to find out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for all of the support so far. I appreciate every view, kudos, comment, and bookmark more than words can say. An additional thanks to Xaori for pushing me to pick myself up off the floor and power through this chapter. :) She's the best, read her fics.


	5. Chapter 5

There were times in which Claire failed to find any remnant of the girl she once met in Raccoon City in Sherry Birkin. She assumes that this is a result of many things, ones far more malignant than puberty and age. Watching her parents die horrifically, being forcibly pawned off to the government to serve as a lab rat, and suffering from the repercussions of bioterrorism for the majority of her life were likely many of the driving factors for the change Sherry underwent. Sometimes, Claire suspected that the young, innocent girl she once knew was far gone.

This was not one of those times.

She watches Sherry fidget with her paper coffee cup, tilting it back and forth on its base in a futile attempt to placate her nerves. The young woman makes no effort to brush away the pale locks that have fallen in her eyes and instead stares hard into empty space, puffing out her cheeks as she engages in a slow exhale.

"I'm really worried about him, Claire."

Claire recognizes the subtle tremor in her voice. It's a form of inflection that she hasn't heard in years, one that she assumed dissolved with age. For a moment, Claire thinks she can see the young girl in her.

"It'll be alright, Sherry." She strives to reassure her. "I'll take care of it."

Sherry strums her fingers against the tabletop, creating a quiet tap with the ends of her nails. Her chin rests in her opposite hand as she grows quiet and pensive.

"I've never seen him like this." She whispers. "He's drinking _so_ much."

"It's going to be okay, Sherry. He's done this before."

"But, what if," Sherry swallows hard, biding time to work up the courage to voice her concern, "What if he _dies_, Claire?"

The tangible fear that rattles between her words snatches at Claire's heartstrings. Sherry's relationship with Leon was unique and, though neither of them ever said it aloud, it was evident that he served as a surrogate father in lieu of the monster that died in Raccoon City. They had grown close after Claire left for Europe in search of Chris, and not even Leon's alcoholism had managed to sever their bond—that is, perhaps, until now.

"He won't, Sherry."

Claire can't be sure of that. Leon very well could drink himself to death, but she imagined that it would be an indomitable venture to undertake. His tolerance for alcohol had become incredibly high and, as far as she could tell, his liver was taking the beating extraordinarily well. Still, Claire couldn't shake that thought from her mind once Sherry planted the seeds, and she supposes that's why she finds herself in his living room once again that evening in spite of his empty threats to have her removed from his property.

"Go to sleep, Leon." She's like a broken record, but it's the best solution she can concoct when he's being so belligerent.

"I'm not a fucking child." He barks. "I'll do whatever I damn well please."

She doesn't have the energy to argue. Claire gives him a half-hearted shrug, one that she presents with a single shoulder as she clutches a massive bag of groceries in her opposite arm.

"Suit yourself."

Claire leaves him to seethe on the couch in private. The beautiful kitchen in the townhouse is wasted on him, equipped with pale marble countertops and stainless steel appliances, and she thinks it's typical of him to pay for something so nice merely for show. She decides not to waste too much thought on it and drops the bag onto the island, pausing to run her fingers through her hair and pull it up into a loose bun.

The internal condition of his fridge is exactly as she expected. There's nothing but alcohol and out of date condiments within and she wrinkles her nose at the pool of spilled whiskey that sits on the middle shelf. She finds the trash can that's tucked away beneath the sink and drags it out to begin her routine. Claire finds that she feels numb as she methodically removes the bottles and cans from his fridge and pours their contents down the drain because she's already done this so many times before. She thinks about the money she's wasting and the way he'll surely scream in her face once it's all said and done, but there is no guilt that follows in the way that it once did.

She scours away at the inside of his fridge with care, ensuring that the smell of whiskey has been lifted. Her hands are chilled to the point of stinging when she finishes and she closes her eyes, taking in a deep breath as she holds them beneath the warm water from the nearby sink faucet. She wonders what it's like to die from alcoholism, to feel your liver rot from the inside and still willfully poison it. Claire wonders if this is how it will end, with her at his bedside in some dingy hospital room as he slips into a comatose state. It's a pathetic death, one that's not meant for _Leon S. Kennedy_, and she tries to convince herself that he's somehow impervious to the repercussions of his actions.

Once his fridge is restocked, she stands before it, french doors splayed open, and simply stares at her handiwork. It's almost appears as though he's a functional human being and she ponders how long it'll last before being replaced by spirits and beer. She hypothesizes three days at the most, and the thought makes her heart wrench. Despite her best efforts, she realizes she'll never be enough to touch Leon in a meaningful way—at least, not in the way Ada had. Ada could inspire lifestyle changes and she simply was regarded as a nag.

She hates the way the discovery makes her feel. Her lungs feel tight and her hands begin to tremble around the door handles. Claire stares hard at the pint of milk that now sits on the top shelf and she feels her eyes begin to burn. She doesn't know why she breaks down, but she does. Claire stands in his kitchen, illuminated by the blue glow of his refrigerator as her shoulders shake with sobs that she can't quite contain. She gasps for air, clenches her teeth, and tries to keep them from escaping as best she can.

When she finishes, her cheeks feel tight with the watered down mascara that likely stains them. She pulls her hand inside of her sleeve and uses the edge of it to wipe down her face, not particularly concerned with her appearance of the state of her clothes. Claire relocates to the living room where Leon's sprawled out on the couch, snoring loudly in his obtunded state. She tiptoes around as she collects the dirty laundry strewn throughout the house, balling it together in her arms as she carries it to the laundry room.

The sound of the water filling the drum is extraordinarily loud as a result of the silence in the home. She pauses in the entryway, leans against the doorframe with her arms crossed over her chest, and she thinks about the man he used to be. Once during Jill's alleged death, when Chris had temporarily lost himself to his own grief and she was forced to suffer in solitude, Leon had reached out to her. He had been the only one to call her on her twenty-seventh birthday with only five minutes left to celebrate and an apology for his lack of punctuality. It was the last act of thoughtfulness on his part and the last moment in which she saw a glimpse of the man she loved.

As she's stripping the soiled sheets from his bed, she wonders if the past tense is appropriate. Had she loved him or _does_ she love him? In a way, there was never any closure for her. The man she loves has gone missing as though he was smuggled away in the dead of night with nothing left to remember him by. Sometimes, she expects that he'll return someday and step back into her life as though nothing had ever happened. She thinks about Raccoon City and the way he'd pull her close in the middle of the night, allowing her to bury her face in his chest as he murmured in her ear to distract her from the images that haunted her dreams. Leon had been in love with her once, during that brief period in which Ada Wong was assumed to be dead, and he promptly fell out of love with her one Ada showed her pretty face.

Claire hates herself for ever thinking such, but there were times in which she wished she would have killed the bitch herself back in Raccoon City. Had it all truly ended back then, where would they have been now? Would she still be devoting herself to this seemingly futile war or would she finally have holidays off, days in which her attempts at sleeping in were disturbed by the excited patter of feet on the staircase before the inevitable whine of '_mom, I'm hungry_?'

She knows she should stop. How long would she insist on torturing herself with hypotheticals? When was it appropriate for her to let go of the man she loves and move on? If she ever found the strength to do so, would she ever truly be able to connect with anyone else in the way she had him? She couldn't be sure.

It's not the time nor the place, she decides, as she's redressing his bed with an extra set of sheets she had bought him for occasions like these. She finds more half-consumed booze beneath his bed and pours it down the bathroom sink, sighing as she finds more stored in the vanity's drawer. Claire becomes so engrossed in watching the liquid swirl down the drain that she nearly jumps when she looks into the mirror to see him standing behind her, leaning with an arm on the doorframe as he watches her.

"Leon." She screws her eyes shut and cusses at herself for not hearing him approach, preparing for the verbal assault that's bound to come.

"I'm just...looking for some Tylenol." He tells her, nodding towards the medicine cabinet that's hidden behind the mirror.

Claire steps back and shrinks against the wall to allow him to enter, not daring to look at the bottles strewn across the sinktop in fear of drawing his attention to them. She watches him squint his eyes, bracing a hand against his brow to protect them from the light. He opens the cabinet carefully and she can't help but stare at the muscle that flexes in his arm as he moves.

The pills rattle around in the bottle as he struggles to pop off the cap. Claire allows him to struggle momentarily before she takes it from him and drops a couple of tablets into his palm. He mutters his gratitude and throws them into his mouth, grimacing as he swallows them dry.

"I'm glad you're here." He suddenly says, voice hoarse on account of his parched throat. "I mean it."

She's mad at the way her stomach flips at his words. Claire reminds herself that he doesn't mean it, that he would have said something far different had this happened hours ago.

"You're welcome."

She keeps it short and simple, a technique that she hopes ensures swift termination of the conversation. Were she anyone else, it might have worked.

"I take you for granted." He quietly laments. "I should treat you better."

The Redfield curse.

"Yeah, maybe." She looks away, fixing her eyes on the soap scum that stains the shower wall.

"Not maybe." She can smell the stale alcohol on his breath as he speaks. "I should."

Claire doesn't want this. She doesn't want to be trapped in this small bathroom with him, not while he's looking at her with those sullen eyes that plead for her forgiveness. It's hot in the confined space and she tries to focus on her breathing, the way her lungs tidal with the act, but the air smells like him and she hates it.

"Yeah," she whispers, "Okay."

She wishes she could hate him for what happens next. Leon turns to face her and she tries not to look at his bare chest. He reaches towards her, twists his finger in a tendril of her hair, and studies her face. She inhales sharply and holds it in her chest.

"Just as pretty as you were when we met." He cooes and she wants so, _so_ badly to be able to hate him. "Maybe prettier."

His thumb follows the line of her jaw in an exploratory way. She closes her eyes because she doesn't want to look at him, doesn't want to see the way he's looking at her. Claire feels his fingers brush along the length of her neck, over her collarbone, and across the slope of her shoulder.

"Leon," it's not as stern as she wants it to be, "Don't do this."

He doesn't move his hand.

"I'm sorry for the way I've treated you."

He's always sorry, isn't he?

"You've been so good to me."

She's been such a good doormat.

"I don't know what I'd do without you."

He'd fucking _die_ because he's ruined all his other relationships to the point that they've become terminal.

"I should treat you better."

He should do a lot of things.

"It's always just you...always been just you."

She's _so_ tired of hearing that cryptic bullshit.

"Okay, Leon." She sighs, defeated. "_Okay._"

"I'm gonna change," he insists, "I really am. I'm gonna change for you because you deserve it."

She regrets opening her eyes. Leon is closer than she remembers him being seconds ago. She can make out the fine stubble that has begun to surface on his cheeks and count the flecks of color in his irises. His gaze is tender, so much like the one of the man she loves, and it hurts so badly that she swears she can feel herself bleed internally.

"Leon," she has to pause to keep from choking on a sob, "Stop."

"Claire…"

"You don't want this."

Her vision is blurred with tears when he gingerly takes her chin in his hand to tilt her face towards his. She doesn't want to cry, not in front of him, so she bites the inside of her cheek to preoccupy her misery with pain. He moves closer, hovers above her, brings his lips so close to hers that she can taste the leftover whiskey on his breath.

"Not this. You."

And then he kisses her. Leon kisses her in that sweet, careful way that he did in the motel room just outside of Arklay when her skin was caked with dirt and she stunk like sewer water. He kisses her like he did in the middle of the night, when she woke herself up with her twisting and turning in the sweat-soaked sheets as memories of Raccoon came to her. He kisses her like he did on her twenty-third birthday, gently and lightly, because he said he wanted to daydream about it while he was in South America.

He kisses her like the man she loves and Claire wishes she would have killed herself that night in her bathtub so she'd never, _ever_ have to experience hurt like this.

"Leon," she mumbles against his mouth, "No."

His chest is warm and hard beneath her hands as she shoves him back, just like that of the man she loves.

"I don't—want this." She manages, choking on a sob as she speaks.

The hurt in his eyes is the kind she's seen often in the eyes of the man she loves and he's fucking _talking_ with the voice of the man she loves.

"Claire, we used to—"

"_Used_ to." She interrupts. "We _used_ to, Leon. I don't fucking know who you are anymore."

When she storms out, her heart is racing a thousand times a minute, and it reminds her of the time the man she loves confessed the way he felt about her all those years ago.


	6. Chapter 6

She can't look away from the pale blobs that float in the river. Although she's too far away from it to make out the finer details, Claire knows exactly what they are. Paris is fucked and the Seine River is proof as it gently carries pieces of corpses with it, lazily propelling severed hunks of limbs and chunks of flesh along its surface. Even when she turns away, the gore remains in her periphery, taunting her from the sidelines as she attempts to focus on the task at hand.

The man sitting in front of her moans in pain as he clutches his limp arm. Claire isn't the most adept at administering first aid, but she suspects that it's broken on account of the way it's swollen and hot to the touch. She passes him a plastic cup that contains a painkiller, urges him to take it by miming with her hands, and she apologizes in the best French that she can manage. He lets out a shrill scream as she positions his arm into a splint and she winces at the sound. As soon as he rises to enter the transport vehicle, another one comes.

Claire knows the woman is infected because she can see the patch of fine bony spines peeking out from beneath her collar. The woman notices her stare and tugs at her collar, pulling it higher to hide the growth of the spurs with a trembling hand. She's afraid, Claire can tell, and she has every reason to be. No one knows what the fuck is plaguing France, but she's quickly picking up on its symptoms.

"Quarantine." She says as calmly as she can manage. "_Mettre en quarantaine?_"

A gun fires nearby and her ears ring in the quiet that follows. One of the medics is still holding the handgun as the body in the chair before him slumps over. It topples to the ground and Claire can't stop staring, can't stop looking into the hollow sockets that once held its eyes or the bony growths that erupt from its flesh like blades. There is no reversal agent for this. Those who turn can't be saved.

The woman in front of her panics. Her breathing quickens and her eyes widen as she looks up at Claire in horror. She's crying out in French and Claire doesn't know what she's saying, but she thinks it sounds like a plea for her life, and her heart feels as though it's sinking in her chest. There is no hope for her—Claire _knows_ it—but she feigns a smile anyway.

"It's going to be okay," she lies as she gingerly rests her hand on her shoulder, "_Tout va…s'arranger?_"

Claire knows she butchered the pronunciation and she doesn't even know if she said it right based on the blank look the woman gives her.

"Okay," she flashes two thumbs up, "O-K?"

The woman just continues to stare at her with an empty gaze. Suddenly, she's incredibly aware of the weight of the gun on her hip. Nervously, she looks around the site they're stationed at. No one notices, no one _can_ notice because the civilians just keep coming. There's no time for her to waste when lives are on the line. Those who turn can't be saved.

Her attention doesn't falter as she pops the snap on the strap that keeps her handgun secured within its holster. She doesn't look away as she hears bones splinter and the woman's head juts to the side, bending her neck at an unnatural angle. Claire keeps her eyes locked with hers as they begin to melt into a substance that resembles egg whites and dribble down her face.

She feels warm blood splatter across her skin when she fires. Someone is shouting, she thinks, but it's hard to hear much of anything over the ringing in her ears and the rapid pace of her heart. Blood seeps into the soil as one of the men drag the body away from her station and she swallows hard, turns towards the gatekeeper, and motions for another to come as she wipes her face with her sleeve.

Broken bones and bleeds. She can handle the next few that come, applying pressure to stem hemorrhage and offering painkillers in an unspoken apology before she sets limbs. Another crack of a gunshot pierces the air and Claire surveys the corpse from afar, this one covered in bulbous, fleshy lumps and more razor-like spines.

The B.S.A.A. keeps bringing them in with no apparent end in sight. There's yelling from beyond the barricade as another patient is leaving her station. Claire turns towards the gate in time to see soldiers come bustling in, cradling children in their arms, and she feels numb. She knows children aren't impervious to this war, but _god,_ she wishes they were.

Claire hears someone call her name and she isn't sure why she's surprised to see Piers approaching her because of _course_ he's here. He gives her a half-hearted wave as he shifts his shoulder, adjusting the weight of the boy that he's clutching to his chest. She breathes in air that isn't as cleansing as she hoped it would be in order to prepare herself for what's to come.

Piers lays the unconscious boy across the gurney and she doesn't know what to do. There's a trail of blood dribbling from his ear and she knows _that_ can't be good. She shines a light in his eyes and finds that his pupils are unequal. Claire thinks this is a head injury, something that she certainly isn't trained to manage, and she calls out for the medic. When no one arrives, she looks back to find him preoccupied with piecing together some sad sap's open chest.

They don't have the resources to adequately handle this. People are going to die, lives that might have been salvaged will be lost because there simply aren't enough hands. She isn't medical personnel, but she's been through disaster training, and she knows what unresponsiveness suggests in this scenario—expectant death. No perceived chance at survival with the care that is available.

She loops a black ribbon around the boy's wrist, her head swimming as she pulls it into a knot. _Futile_, she reminds herself, _no hope._

"I can't…" She looks at Piers. "I can't do anything."

Claire thinks she's going to vomit, but then he looks at her with those molten amber eyes and she feels a little more grounded. Piers is composed, a _soldier_, someone who she assumes has seen this type of tragedy time and again, and she wonders if he feels anything at all behind that stoic expression of his.

"It's alright," he tells her, "It's the right thing to do."

She wants to laugh because it's absolutely _not_ the right thing to do; not according to her moral compass, anyway.

"Yeah."

Time seems to move slowly as he pulls the gurney away. The boy's dark bangs rustle gently with the breeze and the movement of his chest as he breathes grows shallow. His skin is waxy and pale, a color that doesn't quite match the innocent patch of freckles that spans his cheeks, and she knows death does not discriminate but _fuck,_ he looks too young to die. It isn't fair, but she supposes that nothing is in the war against bioterrorism.

She thinks she sees the child's hand twitch. Claire narrows her eyes as the distance between her and Piers grows. Her stare is hard, almost as if daring the kid to move again, and his body remains petulantly still. Claire writes it off as a product of her imagination, an illusion born out of her hope for his survival, but his eyes suddenly pop open and he lets out a ghastly wail.

Piers looks over his shoulder, back at the child, and he openly grimaces. Claire's familiar with that infernal sound and she shouts to Piers in warning. The kid is infected—fucking _infected_—and turning right before her very eyes. He reaches into the open air and his flesh begins to fall away from bone, fingers forming into a talon-like appendage, and she doesn't know what to think. She and Piers make eye contact once more and he gives her a curt nod before disappearing behind a supply tent with the gurney in tow.

The tension in the air is thick. Everyone has fallen silent, their attention fixed on the tent that obscures the sight of Piers and the child. Her chest is tight with the breath that she holds and Claire has to reassure herself that he'll be alright, that Piers is one of the B.S.A.A.'s finest and more than capable of dealing with the creature, but she isn't entirely sure that her worry is related to the strength of his skills. She muses about how it must feel to execute something that was once a child and it reminds her of Raccoon City. Even then, with Sherry discolored and grotesque from the early signs of infection, she never once contemplated ending her life, neither out of mercy or necessity.

The gunshot sounds so much like thunder that she almost wants to believe that it _is._ It's a single sound, one that echoes throughout the premises, and she feels her eardrums vibrate with the noise. There's a collective silence amongst those who occupy the post. Some of them exchange looks with one another, a few hushed whispers flitter through the air, and Claire nearly feels as though she herself has been shot when Piers comes back into view, wiping at his face with the back of his gloved hand and proceeding through the camp as though his hands aren't saturated with the blood of a child.

"Keep it moving, people!" She hears the medic scream and she faces the entry point once again and waves for the next wounded to enter because there is no time for mourning when lives are at stake.

* * *

Though the rain is nothing more than a light drizzle, each drop that lands on his back seems to strike hard and heavy. Piers can feel it even through his uniform and the way the wind whips through his hair inspires a chill that runs down the length of his spine. Despite his discomfort, his attention remains unbroken. His eyes are glued on a window as he observes it through his scope, the edge of someone's arm just barely peering into view.

The Élysée Palace is just as impressive as he ever could have imagined it to be, though he never dreamed that he'd experience it under these circumstances. A rebel group of civilians have taken hostages within the mansion, a rash decision that they claim to have had no choice but to make. The rebels insist that they are privy to the culprit behind the outbreak, pinning the travesty on a handful of politicians who are up for reelection. It's a bold assertion that's met with enough doubt to inspire a decision as rash as terrorism in order to have their voices heard.

"_Nivans, have any eyes?"_

"Negative."

He watches someone's elbow briefly come into view, but it's hardly enough to work with. In this type of situation, there's only one viable option: shoot to kill in order to preserve the lives of the innocent. He can't afford to miss a shot.

"_TerraSave is sending in a negotiator."_

Piers makes a frustrated sound that lodges in his throat. It's all incredibly morally grey as far as he's concerned. If the rebels are correct about the outbreak being an intentional act on behalf of the French government, can they truly be blamed for violently lashing out in order to have their voices be heard? At present, no hostages had been executed, and he can't be sure that it was ever their intention to do so.

"_Is that...Captain, is that your sister?"_

He freezes at Finn's question. Piers can't see the entrance from his position, but a tremor runs down his spine anyway and he hopes to every deity he can think of that it isn't.

"_Just focus on the mission. Keep her safe."_

There's a hint of trepidation in Chris's voice, a quiver to his speech that Piers doesn't recognize. He can't recall ever witnessing any semblance fear in the older man. It's almost endearing to hear his concern for his sister, but Piers admits to himself that he's just as worried as Chris is. All it takes is one small fuck up on their part to get her killed and he doesn't think he could bear to have her blood on his hands.

The radio silence that follows is practically deafening. Piers hates his vantage point because he can't see much of anything, can't see _her_, and it frustrates him beyond belief. Can the others be trusted to ensure her safety?

_"This maniac is waving his gun around. Shouting, I think."_

Piers hates this.

_"I have eyes on Redfield."_

He wants to be the one to keep her safe.

_"This doesn't look good. It might be best to en_—_"_

The crack of the gunshot nearly shatters him. Piers grits his teeth and averts his gaze, taking his attention away from his scope to clench his eyes closed. He sees her in the darkness of his eyelids, sprawled out on the floor in a pool of her own blood with glassy eyes and a parted mouth in a similar likeness to that of Ada Wong, and he swears his heart briefly seizes into stillness at the thought.

_"One of the hostages has been eliminated. Requesting permission to engage."_

She's alive.

_"This needs to be a coordinated effort in order to save as many as possible."_

Piers can't tell who's talking anymore. One of the rebels has stepped in front of his windowpane and is flailing about as he gesticulates angrily.

_"Five rebels."_

He wonders if revealing the truth genuinely warrants death.

_"Is everyone in position?"_

Are the hostages truly so innocent? If the rebels are right, then…

_"Five, four, three_—_"_

...the people they are saving could very well be the ones responsible for this mess.

"—_one."_

Piers hesitates and it's a mistake that he thinks will haunt him for the rest of his life. It's only a three second delay, but it's more than enough time to compromise the mission. At the last moment, he watches the man within the lens of his scope fire his weapon, and he's eliminated by one of his colleagues before he has a chance to let up on the trigger he has abruptly begun to pull back.

_"...that's the last of them."_

Perhaps he's imagining it, but Piers thinks there's a harshness to Chris's words and that it must be directed at him. He hates himself for having hesitated and wonders if he should roll right off the edge of the roof out of penance.

The rain continues to fall in a light drizzle and Piers shudders from the chill. Still prone on the cold, wet cement of the rooftop, Piers lets out a shaky sigh as he runs a hand over his face and discovers that there's a slight tremble to his hand.

_"Captain, Claire has been shot."_

He feels sick to his stomach as he recounts the image of the man letting off one final shot before being executed.

_"Her kevlar took most of the force. She's alright."_

Piers doesn't bother to argue when Chris confronts him later on because he thinks he deserves it for being such a fucking idiot. He has always been methodical and careful, the _perfect_ soldier, and the shame of his mistake weighs heavily on his chest. Piers acknowledges that he's the one who should have been shot—not _her._

He expects Chris to scold him when they regroup. It isn't often that Chris loses his temper, but he supposes that risking his baby sister's life is ample enough reason to blow a fuse. Instead, he's surprised when Chris pulls him aside and speaks to him in a hushed tone.

"Uh," Chris awkwardly scratches at the back of his neck as he stares into the space behind Piers, "You alright?"

There's an awkward silence suspended between them, one that hovers uncomfortably in the air.

"Because, you know," Chris grinds his boot into the wet soil beneath their feet, "If you need some time off, I can send in a request. Don't feel obligated because of this outbreak. We can manage."

"No, I'm alright." Piers waves his hand in a flippant gesture, "It was my mistake. It won't happen again."

Chris crosses his arms across his chest as he pensively looks up at the overcast sky and mulls over his terse response. Piers clenches his eyes closed and briefly scrunches up his face in an anguished expression that goes unnoticed by his Captain. He wants the conversation to end so he can privately wallow in self-pity for his mistake.

"We can't afford mistakes like this," Chris says softly, "Lives are on the line."

_My sister's life is on the line and you nearly lost it._

Piers knows it's hidden in the spaces between his words.

"I'm sorry."

The words are thick in his throat as he says them. He knows that his apology isn't enough to atone for his fuck-up, but he utters it anyway because truly is _really_ fucking sorry_._ He's sorry for a lot of things; sorry about bioterrorism, not living up to his parents' expectations, and choosing a military career over a comfortable 9-to-5. Despite his laundry list of things to apologize for, Piers acknowledges that this is perhaps the thing he's most sorry for in all of his twenty-six years of life.

Chris doesn't bother to look in his direction. Instead, he lets out a shuddering sigh and mumbles, "I know."

Piers wishes Chris would just rip him a new one. Were he anyone else, he would have been publicly berated with the entire team as an audience. For whatever reason, Chris has chosen to spare him and it only makes him feel worse. Piers would much rather be on the receiving end of the infamous Redfield wrath than be given pity.

He breaks the silence with a cough and gruffly asks, "Is she alright?"

Chris nods.

"You wouldn't be standing here if she weren't, Nivans."

* * *

She's never been in a war zone before, but Claire thinks that this must be reminiscent of one. With her forehead pressed to the cold windowpane, she watches one of the B.S.A.A.'s soldiers take out one of the infected from a distance. The bony creature collapses onto the ground and the rattle of gunfire ceases. She observes the dark-clad figure as it approaches the corpse and gives it a harsh kick for good measure.

Claire can't necessarily pinpoint why all of this makes her so uncomfortable, but it does. The outbreak has spread like wildfire across the country and it has become difficult to contain despite the combined efforts of both the B.S.A.A. and TerraSave. It brings back memories of the Raccoon City Incident, a time that was marked by confusion, chaos, and death, and she nearly feels like the nineteen-year-old girl who was unexpectedly thrust into the middle of the zombie apocalypse once again.

Some of her discomfort likely comes from the state of the city. Paris has long since been evacuated and it's unsettling to watch such a lavish neighborhood become a ghost town. She imagines that the streets were once filled with sunshine and eager shoppers rather than the snow and blood that now saturates the pavement. It makes her shiver to think of the lives that might have been lost in that stip of street and she turns away from the window with the hope that out of sight means out of mind.

The hotel's dining area is dark aside from the silvery light that filters in through the windows. The grilles in the window panes cast shadows across the tile floor and it somehow adds to the loneliness created by the empty room. She thinks the room might have been pretty before the city fell as she observes the ornate chandeliers that are suspended from the ceiling and the intricate filigrees in the furniture.

Perched on the edge of the countertop, Claire watches her feet as they dangle above the floor. She wonders if the dark splotches that ruin the fabric of her boots are blood or mud as she points her toes together, turning her feet from side to side to study the damage. With a sigh, she slumps back against the wall, and the abrupt action causes something to pull in her stomach.

How could she have forgotten about being shot? Grimacing to herself, she pulls back the hem of her shirt to peek at the dark bruise that blossoms across her skin. It's an ugly mixture of shades of red and purple that radiate outward from the once open wound that has now crusted over with blood and she wonders if it'll leave a scar.

Not that it matters. It's just another wound to add to the laundry list of damage she has taken ever since the war on bioterrorism began. Both her body and mind are laden with scars that she suspects will never fade. There are no household remedies, overpriced beauty creams, or therapy sessions that can undo the injuries she has sustained and she's come to accept that.

Maybe she's a little drunk. She blames her pathetic thoughts on the bottle of wine that's loosely clasped in her hand. Claire tightens her grip on it and rests the base of it against the top of her thigh, tilts it back and forth idly as she listens to its contents gently slosh around.

The gunshot wound is evidence of yet another failure on her part. She wonders where she should rank it on the impressively long hierarchy of Redfield fuck-ups—perhaps between getting captured at Umbrella's Paris Laboratory and failing to realize Downing was involved in the Harvardville Incident at the beginning of it all?

She blames herself for the death count at the Élysée Palace. Had she been more proficient, everyone might have made it out alive. Claire wonders how many lives have been lost as a result of her actions and she shudders at the thought. Annette, Steve, Pedro, Gabriel, Inéz, countless others whose names she'd never know...

Another swig of wine won't fix her problems, but she suspects it might help. Claire swallows another healthy mouthful of alcohol and winces as it burns the back of her throat. Her misery is quickly replaced with anger—she _is_ a Redfield after all—and she thinks about all the shit she's tired of. Claire's tired of bioterrorism, tired of all the death, tired of bruises, cuts, and the stupid fucking voicemails Leon leaves on her stupid fucking phone.

Leon. Yeah, she's _sick_ of him too, if she's being honest with herself. Claire doesn't know how many times she can keep playing the same game with him before she drives herself insane. She's running out of interventions and ways to sacrifice herself to try to cure his addiction. Maybe it's the alcohol talking, but she decides that it's about time she stops being a doormat for him.

She hisses when she finishes off the bottle and wrinkles her nose in disgust with both herself and the taste. Claire doesn't mean enough to Leon to inspire him to give up drinking and she needs to come to terms with it. She's just _Claire,_ Claire fucking Redfield, the one Leon can always count on to pick up the pieces once he's made a mess of his life. She'll never be Ada. Never, ever, not even now that the bitch is dead.

How many _years_ has she wasted on him? How long has she tried to stuff herself into the Ada-shaped hole in Leon's life? How much longer is she going to embarrass herself by chasing after the ghost of a man who she hasn't seen in nearly a decade?

Fuck, she hates herself. Claire reaches up to massage one of her temples in a fruitless attempt to ease her mind. Her fury only continues to build as she reflects on the time she has wasted and begins to count the years that have gone by. It feels like a string is being pulled taut in her head, strung up from one side of her skull to the other, and it grows progressively more thin until it snaps.

Frustrated, she thoughtlessly flings the empty bottle across the room. Claire hardly hears it collide against the wall and audibly shatter onto the floor, but it's hard to miss the rumble of a familiar voice.

"Shit!"

She whips her head to the side in time to watch a figure emerge from the shadows of the back of the dining room. Piers steps into the pale light and Claire looks back towards the window to hide the shame that burns on her cheeks.

"You sure you wanna mix that with painkillers?" He asks as he points back over his shoulder at what she imagines is the remains of the wine bottle.

"Who said that alcohol isn't my painkiller?" She snarkily responds, but quickly considers retracting the statement.

Piers crosses his arms over his chest as he stops to stand in front of her. It's the first time she's seen him without multiple layers of kevlar and clothing to shield him from death and the cold and she's surprised by how well he fills out the t-shirt he's wearing. The hard look in his eyes softens and she watches his gaze falter from her face to her body.

"I heard you were shot." He softly says and she wonders if Leon would have bothered to check on her were he in his shoes.

She can't manage to get words past the lump in her throat so she pulls her shirt up instead. Claire watches his brows furrow as he bends forward at the waist, bringing his face closer to her to inspect her wound in the poor light.

"Jesus, Claire," he hisses, "What the hell kind of kevlar were you wearing?"

Claire shrugs as she lets go of the fabric that's bunched in her fist and hides the damage from his view once more.

"TerraSave has to cut corners where it can."

She's not quite kidding, but the corner of her lips twitch as though she is. Piers has stepped back out of her personal space and she pats the empty counter beside her in a welcoming gesture.

"I have alcohol," she says in a sing-song voice, "If you want to join me."

He hesitates and she wishes she knew what was going through his head. Claire wonders if he's judging her, if he's taking her less seriously because of her drinking.

"Sure."

She's surprised when he effortlessly hoists himself onto the counter beside her, but she opens another bottle of wine from her thoughtless raid of the hotel kitchen. Claire swallows a healthy mouthful of it and scowls at the taste.

When she turns to Piers, he's watching her with a curiously raised eyebrow.

"Straight from the bottle, huh?"

Claire smirks.

"I'm a 'go big or go home' kind of woman."

She tilts the bottle in his direction and heeds, "Fair warning—it tastes like shit."

Piers laughs as he takes the bottle from her and takes a modest sip. He chokes it down with an audible gulp and glares at the bottle as though it has somehow offended him before passing it back to Claire.

"You're right," he coughs, "It tastes like shit."

Claire smiles before forcing down more of the bitter wine.

"I'm not sure why the French are so proud of their wine." Piers says. "Even the beer in Ukraine was better than this."

Despite his words, he accepts the bottle when she offers it to him and takes another sip.

"Speaking of Ukraine," Claire says as she leans back against the wall, "I can't tell if I hate Ukraine or France the most."

Piers appears to mull it over as he looks up at the ceiling.

"France." He finally says. "The campfires were better than the infected."

"Yeah. Guitar guy was cool too."

He gives her a perplexed look, "You mean Reid?"

Claire feels her cheeks burn.

"Yeah, I guess," she admits, "I kind of...forgot everyone's name but yours."

There's a moment of quiet between them, one in which the air feels hot and heavy. Claire's eyes briefly meet his and she finds that he's looking directly at her with his intense amber gaze. The air is suddenly stifling and she looks away as she takes in a slow, shaking breath.

"If you could be anywhere else right now, where would you want to be?"

The question seems to surprise him. He thrums his fingers against the edge of the counter in the pause that follows.

"Probably at home." He chuckles under his breath. "I just want to sleep in a warm, familiar bed."

She doesn't know why she asks, but she does.

"Where is home?"

Her voice is quiet as she speaks and Piers gives her a sideways smile before downing more wine.

"An empty, unfurnished apartment that I see once every three months or so, I guess." He breathes out through his nose in a near laugh. "In retrospect, I guess 'home' might be a bit of an overstatement."

"What even makes a house a home anyway?" She asks. "Lord knows mine isn't."

Piers shrugs.

"I don't know," he confesses, "Someone to come home to...I guess?"

Claire feels her heart skip a beat and she isn't sure why. When she closes her eyes, she tries to picture the space Piers calls a home and imagines stark white walls and uncomfortable furniture that has yet to be broken in. She blames it on the alcohol when she thinks about wanting to add color to his life and she shakes her head at her own stupidity.

Piers is watching her when she opens her eyes. She's suddenly aware of the heat radiating from his body and she wonders if he moved closer while she was daydreaming. Claire swallows hard and studies his face, following the long lines of his jaw and and coming to rest on an abrasion that peeks from around the side of his neck.

"Where would you want to be?"

At first, she doesn't hear him. Claire's attention remains on the scab that mars his skin, but his words eventually process as they pass through the fog in her head. She tears her attention away from his neck and looks him in the eyes.

"Hell, I don't know," she sheepishly grins, "Anywhere but here, I guess, but…"

She feels her heart rate increase.

"But...your company is nice."

Claire awkwardly clears her throat.

"I mean...you make it more bearable."

She catches her lower lip between her teeth.

"Ugh, I mean...it's not as bad with you around."

Claire wonders how far she can shove her boot down her own throat. Piers smiles and takes the bottle that's sitting between them. She watches him drink, the way his Adam's apple bobs in his throat as he does it, and how the tendons in his arm shift as he moves to wipe his mouth with the back of his hand.

He looks back at her with those bright, burning eyes and that boyish grin that suddenly makes her weak in the knees.

"You too, Claire."

Claire wants to blame it on the alcohol when she inches a little closer to him and she wants to blame it on her loneliness when she draws one leg up onto the countertop so that she can face him. She wants to blame it on the pain from the gunshot when her breathing quickens and she wants to blame it on Leon when she thinks _fuck, I want to kiss him._

So she does.

With her eyes closed and her breathing shallow, Claire presses her lips to his. Neither of them move and she parts her lips slightly to feel his hot breath intermingle with hers. Claire kisses him slowly and carefully with a gentle brush of her lips against his and finds that Piers Nivans tastes like shitty wine and liberation.

"Claire," he whispers against her mouth before pulling away slightly, "What are you doing?"

She cups one of his cheeks with her hand and angles his face towards hers in order to realign his mouth into her trajectory.

"Fucking up my life." She huskily whispers and captures his mouth with hers once again.

Claire feels his hand come to rest on her upper arm as he gently holds onto her for leverage. She kisses him confidently this time with enough pressure to elicit a low groan that dwells in his throat. His lips are surprisingly soft and she parts her lips, catching his lower lip between them and nipping gently.

Piers exhales and she takes advantage of it. Claire feels something stir between her thighs when her tongue finds his and she makes a quiet sound in response. Her hand moves to cup the nape of his neck and she tilts his head downwards, bringing his mouth more fully to hers to explore him more thoroughly.

The heat between her thighs is uncomfortable and she rests one hand against the top of his thigh. Claire's lips hover just above his as she slides closer to him and his eyelids flutter open. She looks him in the eyes before closing her own and kisses him again. She's thorough this time, brushes the pad of her thumb along his jaw in slow, repetitive strokes as she nips at his lower lip and soothes the sting with a swift sweep of the tip of her tongue.

Her lips feel hot and numb, but she doesn't stop. She kisses him once, twice, a third time before he breaks it off. She feels his breath come in ragged pants that fan across her face, but she doesn't have the courage to open her eyes.

"Claire," the huskiness in his voice makes her shiver in anticipation, "This isn't…"

She opens her eyes, traces the curve of his bottom lip with the pad of her thumb.

"It's late." He says. "Let me walk you back to your room."

Claire whimpers in protest and he laughs good-naturedly.

"Come on."

He slides off the edge of the counter and stands, offering her his hand. She stares at it for a moment, but eventually takes it. Her heart thrums loudly in her ears and her mind is still as he leads her through the halls. When they reach her door, Piers smiles as he pushes the door open.

"Thanks for your company tonight."

She nods.

"You too."

As soon as the lock clicks into place, Claire leans back against the door and presses a hand against her chest to feel her heart as it races in her chest. She's drunk and Leon would have fucked her anyway, but he's not Leon.

He's _Piers._

Claire runs a hand through her hair and cusses under her breath.

He's Piers, not _Leon,_ and she just made out with him in a French hotel in the middle of what might be the most terrible outbreak she has ever witnessed. Claire doesn't know what to think about that, but one thing is for certain as it runs through her mind again and again as she tosses and turns in the sheets—

—he's _Piers_, not Leon.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delay, but now I'm back. :)


	7. Chapter 7

Piers does his best to forget that night in the weeks that follow and he's almost grateful for the massive influx of monsters that suddenly infiltrate the area. Eradicating the B.O.W. presence in the region keeps him busy, engages his fight-or-flight response and occupies his mind. The first few days are nothing but a rehearsal of what he knows best and he succumbs to the muscle memory of combat with ease.

At night, he doesn't find such luck. As he lays in the quiet of his empty hotel room, his mind betrays his exhausted body as it runs wild with snippets of his memories of _her_—the tendrils of auburn hair that curl around her face, the sullen look that remains in her eyes even as she forces a feigned smile in the midst of conversation, her sloppy attempts at French, and the way she wrinkles her nose at her own pronunciation as she speaks it.

There's nothing particularly special about her. Piers has met many strong and respectable women in his line of work and he tries to convince himself that they aren't any different from her. Claire is pretty—_beautiful_—and that's all there is to it. He has crawled his way into the beds of women while on deployment to satisfy his needs before and Claire is just another one of those women who managed to catch his eye in a time of loneliness.

But he had never thought twice about those women, had he? They never took shelter in his mind and _hell,_ he'd never even cared enough to learn their names. Those women had been parts of his past that he wanted to forget, tangible evidence of his weakness and lapses in self-control. Was Claire truly one of them? Was she someone he wanted to someday forget?

"_Piers!_"

The hushed call of his name causes him to jolt upright and sit at attention. Silence follows and he nearly writes the interruption off as a product of his own imagination, but a light rapping sounds from beyond the door just as he begins to settle back against the mattress. He grunts quietly to himself as he fumbles with the blankets, tossing them back as he gracelessly stumbles from bed. Piers snatches up a pair of sweatpants as an afterthought on his way to the door and he hastily pulls them on, nearly tripping on the fabric as he moves.

He wishes he would have grabbed more clothing when he finds Claire standing on the opposite side of the door. Piers feels a little self-conscious as he crosses his arms over his chest for the sake of some semblance of modesty.

"What's wrong?"

She seems distant, eyes fixed on some point in space behind him. Piers takes a step back and looks over his shoulder to survey the dark room behind him, but finds nothing.

"Claire?"

The sound of her name appears to startle her. She inhales sharply and quickly looks him in the eyes as she tucks a tendril of hair behind her ear.

"Hey," her voice is breathy and hushed, "I need your help."

He doesn't like the way this sounds.

"Claire," he steps forward to peek out into the empty hallway, "What's wrong? Are you okay?"

She nods.

"I need to go into town," she explains, "Will you come with me?"

He peers down at his watch and furrows his brow in confusion.

"It's 0200." He mumbles. "It'd be safer after dawn."

"It can't wait until daybreak."

He can't even begin to imagine what pressing matter warrants wandering into a potentially B.O.W.-infested ghost town in the early hours of the morning, but he finds that he can't say no when she's looking up at him through her dark lashes and nervously chewing on her lower lip. Piers sighs in defeat and steps back, allowing her space to enter the room.

"I have to get dressed."

As he rifles through his bag, he watches her approach his bed from his periphery, and his heart skips a beat. His mouth feels dry and he tries his best to maintain subtlety as he watches her, mind reeling with conjectures about her intentions. He thinks about how her fiery hair would look splayed across the stark white linens and pictures the curves of her body amidst the twisted sheets, but when she snatches up his pillow to strip it of its linen, his fantasies quickly cease.

"Are you…"

He pauses, shirt clenched in his fist as he turns to her.

"Are you...stealing my pillowcase?"

She nods as though it's not an outlandish thing to do in a man's room at two in the morning.

"I need it."

"Uh…"

"You'll see, okay? Hurry up."

The cold burns his lungs when they step outside and Piers thinks he might regret everything. He squints his eyes as he rubs his gloved hands together and Claire wraps her arms around herself, tucking her hands in her armpits as she moves past him to take the lead. The light blanket of snow crunches beneath her boots and she looks back over her shoulder at Piers with a wicked smile that makes his heart swell. It's an honest expression, a genuine grin, and a part of him feels honored to have witnessed it.

They travel quietly at first. Claire tiptoes down the icy sidewalk with surprising grace as she waves her flashlight back and forth, casting the streets ahead in a cool blue light. He's relieved to find that Paris appears to be still and devoid of creatures, but he's cognizant of the weight of his gun that's slung across his back all the same.

The silence they share is comfortable. He takes time to observe her and the subtle details of her movement, like the sway of her ponytail and the lightness of her steps. The silvery moonlight gives her an almost ethereal quality, and when she looks back to steal glances at him, her pale skin seems to glow. Piers might be eating his thoughts from before because he's not sure he's ever met a woman like her. There are times in which she seems so alive and carefree despite the decay and death that surround them and he can't quite tell if that's a quality he merely admires or desperately envies.

"The kids are being evacuated tomorrow."

She suddenly breaks the silence and comes to a stop, waiting for him to catch up. He nods slowly, unsure of how to respond because the way she says it suggests there's more on her mind.

"I imagine that most of them will never see their families again."

So that's what has been on her mind. It's a statement he can't dispute and he only offers a sad smile in return.

"It's an unfortunate consequence of this." He agrees, gesturing around them to nothing in particular. "Of bioterrorism. People don't think about what happens after the massacre is over."

Claire nods and continues along. The streets grow more narrow as they progress and he worries that they've wandered too far. Piers considers speaking up, but Claire begins to talk again.

"It's stupid," she admits with a laugh, "But I want to give them as many good memories as I can before they realize it. Growing up alone is hard and…"

Claire looks over at him and smiles coyly.

"There's a candy store just up ahead. It's not considered stealing if it's the end of the world, right?"

He can't help but laugh because none of the women from his past would sneak out at two in the morning and risk her life to steal candy for a group of children she doesn't even know. Piers isn't sure what that says about Claire Redfield, but he knows it makes him feel strangely warm.

"Well," he scans their surroundings solely for show because he's been vigilant enough to have memorized the license plates on the abandoned cars that line the street, "I don't see any cops around."

She raises an eyebrow and says, "And I was led to believe that you didn't believe in bending the rules."

The way she winks at him makes his heart race and his skin hot.

"I guess there are a lot of things you don't know about me." He teases and she laughs before averting her attention to the road.

It isn't long before he hears the ragged breathing of one of those bony fuckers from up ahead. Piers reaches out to grab a fistful of the back of Claire's coat, forcing her to stop. She whips around to face him and he shakes his head, pressing a finger to his mouth just as it comes around the corner.

From what he's been told, the scientists at the B.S.A.A. haven't identified the strain of virus yet, so he isn't sure what to call the fucking things. They're grotesque, all raw, blistered pink flesh and razor sharp spines that jut from their elongated limbs in various directions. The monsters move in staggered, stumbling motions like they're not used to their own bodies, but they're fast and precise when they're swinging their blade-like appendages around. He's grateful that they can't see for shit, but it leaves their other senses—typically their hearing—heightened.

It's headed in their direction, but he knows it hasn't seen them because of its careless gait. The creature's shuffling around with its arms lazily flopping about and Piers tugs on the edge of her sleeve. He nods to a narrow gap between two nearby buildings, a space that's not quite wide enough to be considered an alleyway, but Claire doesn't put up any semblance of resistance. The street is far too narrow for them to remain in without being detected and he doesn't want to fire on the thing, lest he draw the attention of any that might be lurking nearby.

Once they're nestled in the space, he wishes he would have found a better escape route. Wedged between Claire and the rough brick of the wall that digs into his back, Piers tries not to notice the heat of her breath against his neck. It's impossibly hot in that tight space and he inhales sharply when he feels her hand come to rest on the front of his chest. He looks down at her in question, but she's looking away, anxiously staring out into the street.

The way they breathe makes his skin crawl. He hears the snoring respirations grow louder and he instinctively wraps a protective hand around her upper arm. The stench of rot wafts his way, sour and pungent, and he holds his breath because this one's old and he _really_ doesn't want to fuck with it. Claire is stiff against him, muscles taut in anticipation, and he wonders how he'll keep her safe in such a confined space if the creature somehow does notice their presence.

As it lumbers past them, he eyes the dingy color of its flesh with disgust. He's surprised that something so rotten can still be held together and he shifts a little, forcing more of his body towards the opening and pushing Claire deeper into the space. He isn't able to move much, but it puts the slightest bit of him between Claire and the monster, and that's good enough. Claire narrows her eyes as she looks up at him and he knows he's bound to get an earful from her, but she's already been shot once on his watch and he's not about to let her get hurt again.

He maintains eye contact with her. Her eyes appear darker than usual and the soft lines of her face are emphasized by the shadows cast by the dim street light that flickers on the opposite side of the road. The nip of the cold weather leaves her nose and cheeks flushed and he's tempted to brush the wisps of hair that have escaped her ponytail away from her face. She looks down, attention coming to rest on his mouth, and _fuck,_ he can't help but think about how soft and warm her own is.

It's not the time. They're cramped in a dirty space between two random buildings on an abandoned French street to avoid the attention of some fucked up science experiment that probably clawed its way out of the bowels of Hell and all he can think about is making out with his Captain's little sister. It's wrong for a thousand reasons, not only because of her last name and the creature in the street, and he doesn't understand what's happening to him. Piers had always been level-headed and tactical, the perfectly disciplined soldier, but he's suddenly distracted by a woman he hardly even knows.

"I think it's gone."

He doesn't process what she says at first. There's a delay on his part before he clears his throat.

"Yeah," he mumbles, "I don't hear it anymore."

The soft shell of his coat audibly scrapes against the rough surface of the brick as he maneuvers his way out of the space. He twists his body at an awkward angle and grimaces at the way his shoulder pulls from the position, but he quickly stumbles out into the street. Piers turns both ways, quickly searching for any sign of the monster, and is relieved when he finds none.

He sees Claire from his periphery as she moves down the street and he realizes his heart is racing. Piers blames it on the monster even as she looks back at him with that sly grin while she tucks her hair behind her ear and beckons him to follow with a wave of her hand. He blames it on the monster when his heart continues to thump against his chest even as they make their way back with her wearing a triumphant smile as she shifts the weight of the filled pillowcase from one shoulder to the other.

"You sure you don't want me to carry it?" He asks as the hotel comes into view.

"Why?" She wrinkles her nose and shoots him a hard look. "Because I'm a woman?"

Piers laughs and shakes his head as he asks, "Are you? I hadn't noticed."

Claire rolls her eyes, but the corner of her mouth stays upturned in a smile.

As much as he wants to, Piers isn't sure he can blame it on the monster when his heart races while they stand outside her hotel room and Claire is pressing a soft kiss between his jaw and cheek.

"Thanks for helping." She whispers against his skin.

"Sure."

Piers doesn't know why his heart continues to race after he returns to his room, but he knows that Claire Redfield definitely _is_ something special because she keeps him up in bed in ways that none of those other women ever had.

* * *

The side of his head is throbbing and the sunlight that streams through the dead trees and reflects off the snow hurts his eyes. Piers grunts to himself as he shields his eyes from the sun with his gloved hand. Maybe sneaking out with a woman in the middle of the night and only getting two hours of sleep was a mistake, but he doesn't necessarily regret it.

"Hey, Nivans," Finn calls out, "You're pissier than usual."

Marco snickers under his breath and Piers inhales slowly, allowing the frigid air to burn the lining of his nose and throat. It sobers him a little, lifts his heavy eyelids and gives him a false surge of energy.

"Didn't get much sleep last night." He simply says, uninterested in entertaining Finn's antics.

"Oh yeah?" Marco chimes in. "Find yourself a woman to spend the night with?"

Piers feels as though he's been caught red-handed. Chris has taken point and Piers glances at the back of his head, but he seems as aloof as usual. Surely he'd have said something if he knew he was out in the middle of the night with his sister.

"Yeah right. Nivans wouldn't know what to do with a woman." Finn declares with a snort and Marco chuckles at the remark.

"I can hook ya up, Nivans," Marco says, "I slept with one of those volunteer French nurses and, lemme tell ya—"

"Please don't." Piers grumbles. "I'd like to avoid that mental image."

"Don't be such a prude." Finn reprimands him.

"French really is a fucking sexy language." Marco continues. "I have no idea what the hell she was saying, but I've ne—"

"She was probably shit talking your tiny dick." Piers snaps. "We have a mission, remember?"

Marco gives him a sympathetic look.

"Yeah, yeah," he waves his hand in a dismissive way, "Whenever you're finally ready to lose your virginity, I'll introduce you to her."

"Nivans is right." Chris suddenly interrupts. "We're looking for Delta Team, not STDs."

His back is turned to the group, but Piers thinks he hears a smirk in Chris's voice. The group falls into silence as they continue into the woods. All Piers can hear is the snow that crunches beneath their boots and the occasional snap of branches in the distance.

"You think something got 'em?" Finn quietly asks as he adjusts the heavy rifle in his arms. "I mean, it could have been anything, right?"

"Maybe." Reid says. "This outbreak is pretty fucked. I heard the B.S.A.A. doesn't even know what it is yet."

"Hey, Captain," Finn pauses as though contemplating whether or not to speak, "Was this...what Raccoon City felt like?"

Chris turns his head to the side, revealing the profile of his face for a brief moment as he glances back at Finn.

"Sort of," he admits, "It was all terrifying and confusing back then."

Piers is surprised that Chris chose to share something so intimate with the group of them. He wasn't the type to get involved in their stupid conversations and he absolutely wasn't one to discuss his personal feelings.

"I can't even imagine. No one knew shit about bioterrorism back then, right?"

Chris only nods in response to Reid's question.

"A life without bioterrorism…" Reid muses aloud. "Damn, I can hardly even remember it. I was just a kid back then."

"Yeah...me too."

Finn's voice grows uncharacteristically soft and he awkwardly clears his throat.

"My little sister…" He pauses, looks up at the mess of dead branches above them and breathes in deeply, "She got killed by a Hunter when I was a teenager."

The quiet is uncomfortable. It's a side of Finn that Piers hasn't seen before and it feels as though he's witnessing something that he shouldn't.

"She was eight." He tells them. "Eight fucking years old. I always told her not to go out alone, but…"

He kicks at the snow and sends it flying into a nearby tree.

"I joined the B.S.A.A. for her, you know? We shouldn't be living in a world where shit like that can happen to a kid. I mean, shit, her body was so mutilated that they had to identify her from fucking dental records. How fucked up is that? My ma didn't even have a body to bury."

Reid coughs and pulls off his beanie, flinging flakes of snow off of it before repositioning it on his head.

"Experienced my first outbreak when I was a freshman in college."

He laughs bitterly before continuing.

"I remember it like it was yesterday. I was falling asleep in the back of my calculus class. All of a sudden, there's screaming from down the hallway and these alarms start blaring."

He sniffs and dabs at his cold, flushed nose with the back of his hand.

"I didn't know shit back then. I was just a fucking nerd who played video games and was good at math. I hid like a bitch until the B.S.A.A. showed up to evacuate those of us who survived. A couple guys in my class died trying to fight them off while I—"

"Nah, man," Marco interrupts, "You were, what, _eighteen_?"

Reid shrugs and mumbles, "Yeah, something like that."

"I would've done the same shit." Marco tells him. "You can't beat yourself up over that."

"You probably would've died too." Finn adds. "And we wouldn't be Alpha without ya."

Reid lets out an awkward, ingenuine laugh and shakes his head while mumbling something under his breath.

"Me too though. Some guy at my mom's lab got fired and he retaliated with some of that Los Illuminados shit he was studying." Marco reveals. "You'd think they'd keep tabs on the people they let mess with that shit."

Piers doesn't have anything to contribute, so he remains quiet.

"Hey, Nivans."

He acknowledges Finn with a quiet grunt.

"What about you?" He asks and Piers feels his stomach drop.

"What about me?"

Finn looks at him as though it's the dumbest question he could have asked, but he clarifies anyway.

"Why'd you join the B.S.A.A.?"

It's a question he doesn't want to answer. Piers hadn't been privy to the fact that his squadmates had all been personally touched by bioterrorism in tragic ways and he suddenly feels incredibly out of place. Part of him wonders if he truly deserves his position, if someone like him should have been granted such a high ranking position on the B.S.A.A.'s alleged _Alpha_ team because it seems like he's the only one who doesn't have a personal stake in all of this.

"Well."

What is he supposed to say? Piers joined the U.S. Army straight out of high school and worked his way up to Special Forces because that's what the Nivans family _did_. He didn't have some deep-rooted passion that fueled his military service and he sure as hell hadn't lost anyone he loved to bioterrorism because he hadn't even experienced it firsthand until enlisting in the B.S.A.A.

"Captain recruited me." He finally says.

Finn isn't impressed and he doesn't expect him to be.

"That's it?" Finn incredulously asks.

"That's it."

He wonders if he should have lied.

* * *

Though his heavy rifle remains slung over one shoulder, Piers finds himself at ease as he leans against the stack of sandbags that TerraSave has used to make an impromptu barricade just outside of the city. The mid-afternoon sun is high in the sky, providing enough warmth to have melted the snow and reveal the dried yellow grass and mud that lay hidden beneath it. Beside him, Marco exhales loudly as he drops the butt of his cigarette into the dirt and grinds it beneath the sole of his boot. 

"Transport is late." Marco says, brow creased in concern. "Hope everything's alright."

He hears the kids cheer loudly and Piers returns his attention to them, watching the group of them celebrate as he nods his head in agreement. Claire is red-faced and breathless, hands on her hips as she shakes her head at the lot of them.

"It's not fair." She teases them, puffing out her cheeks in mock annoyance. "It's eight against one!"

The kids laugh as she retrieves the muddy soccer ball from the makeshift goal she has fashioned out of an overturned TerraSave supply crate. She brushes her hair away from her face and wipes at her brow with the back of her hand as the children continue with their fanfare, excitedly sprinting around the field and giggling amongst themselves. Claire tucks the ball beneath her arm and turns towards him, eyes meeting his, and Piers feels embarrassed for having been caught staring.

"Piers!" She animatedly waves at him. "Join my team!"

He feels as though he's being held under a spotlight. All eyes are on him and he's ready to protest. The transport vehicle will arrive at any minute and it's partially his responsibility to ensure that the children board it safe and sound. He's already distracted enough as it is because just being in her presence is enough to make him flustered.

"Come on!" She insists, playfully glaring at the children and eliciting more laughter. "They play dirty. I need help!"

Piers looks over at Marco and he holds up his hands in surrender.

"Don't look at me," he tells him, "I wasn't a sports guy in school."

He isn't sure how he finds himself out on the field, but he does. Piers stands in front of the homemade goal as he watches Claire sprint up and down the field with the kids. They're chattering to one another in French and he doesn't understand a word of it, but the broad grins they wear tell him that they're enjoying themselves. It's uplifting to watch, a welcome change from the tragedy of the outbreak that surrounds them, and he'd be lying to himself if he said the sound of Claire laughing along with them didn't do anything to him.

A dull thud echoes from behind him and he turns around to watch the ball ricochet off the back of the supply crate. One of the boys starts yelling in excitement, holding his arms in the air in triumph, and Claire clicks her tongue at him.

"You're just gonna let them score like that?" She taunts. "You must not have been an athlete in school."

"I was going easy on them." He lies, trying his best not to notice the shapeliness of her toned thighs in the leggings she's wearing.

"_On joue comme des pieds_." Claire explains, pouting and gesturing towards him with her thumb.

Piers assumes it's an insult on account of the way they laugh and he can't help but laugh too. He soon learns that the kids are fast as _hell_ and teeming with seemingly endless energy. It isn't long before he's sitting on the sidelines with Claire and trying to catch his breath once Finn and Marco take their places.

"Are all kids this fast?" He breathlessly asks and Claire smirks.

"Maybe," she ominously says, "Or maybe you're just getting old."

Piers coughs and presses a palm against the stitch in his side as he admits, "Yeah, I might be."

It's a welcome distraction. Piers realizes he hasn't thought about the walking dead or the lives that have been ruined by the infection until he hears the rumble of the transport vehicle approaching from behind. He watches from a distance as Claire helps the children board the massive vehicle and he looks back at the city one last time.

"The countryside is gonna suck." Finn grumbles. "Bunch of bumpkins and B.O.W.s, I bet."

"Hey, I don't mind if the girls don't have teeth." Marco jokes as he waggles his eyebrows suggestively.

Piers doesn't comment—not this time, at least. He thinks about dental x-rays and blood-smeared white boards and decides they're allowed to have their crude humor. It's a coping mechanism, maybe, a way to detach themselves from the horrors at hand and a part of him wishes he could do the same.

He hears the faint crunch of gravel in the distance and he takes a few steps away to peer down the stretch of road. A Humvee approaches from the horizon line and he snatches up his rifle that has long been discarded in the grass. He looks back at his squadmates and they seem just as perplexed as he is.

"MacCauley here." Finn holds the radio close to his mouth. "There's a vehicle approaching. It's…"

Piers squints, the vehicle close enough to allow him to make out the symbol of the American flag that's plastered on the front license plate.

"...American?"

It comes to a stop, but it doesn't put him at ease. Piers keeps a hard grip on his rifle and lifts it slightly, ready to retaliate.

"_Already?"_

The door of the vehicle opens and he isn't sure what to say when he sees who steps out.

"_The DSO has joined the operation."_

Piers narrows his eyes.

"_The President has requested full compliance from us."_

"Why the fuck is the DSO here?" Marco mutters. "It's fucking France. We don't need the Feds fucking this up even worse than the B.O.W.s have."

Piers loosens his grip on the rifle and nods.

"Kennedy." He greets, voice low.

Leon curtly nods in kind, gaze hard as steel.

"Nivans."

Piers doesn't know why the American government is sticking their nose in a French outbreak, but he knows that France is about to get a hell of a lot shittier than it already has been with their involvement.

"We were wrong," Finn says, "Ukraine was paradise."

"Yeah," Piers confesses, "Seems that way."


	8. Chapter 8

_Fuck._

Leon rests his forehead in his palm and lets out a long sigh, elbow digging into the hard tabletop in front of him. He isn't sure why he chose to accept this mission, but he knows he's already regretting it as he listens to Finn loudly rant about the DSO's involvement in what he believed to be the business of the B.S.A.A. alone. Personally, Leon didn't give a shit about the cause. Sure, saving the lives of innocent civilians gave him just as many warm fuzzies as the next guy, but he didn't give a damn about the political climate in France.

"Look," he finally speaks up, his exasperation evident in his voice, "I don't want to be here either, but there are rumors that the French government turned a blind eye to the outbreak and did nothing to prevent it. It violates a NATO agreement. The DSO was summoned to investigate."

Leaning back in his chair, he crosses his arms over his chest and wears a sour expression.

"There is also a very real threat of the infection spreading. If it reaches American soil, it very much becomes America's problem whether you like it or not."

Finn seems like he has a retort resting on his tongue, but he looks over at Chris who shakes his head and persuades him into silence.

Leon knows why he let himself be convinced to join this cause, but he doesn't want to admit it to himself. He determines that the DSO would have forced him into it regardless of his personal opinion and that Claire's presence in France has absolutely nothing to do with it. He's three weeks sober and he pretends he came to keep his mind busy, to sway him away from the temptation of booze, and not to show Claire just how well he'd cleaned up. Leon won't tell her he's a changed man, that he's putting down the bottle for good and wants to make up with her.

That's a lie. He wants her to know. He wants her to know he's sorry, so _fucking _sorry for all the stupid shit he's done. Out of all the people in his miserable life, Claire was the one who deserved his abuse the least. She was the best thing he'd ever had and it was about time he swallowed his fucking pride and tell her as much.

"Kennedy, are you listening?"

He almost jumps at the sound of his own name because of the depth of his thoughts, but he coolly looks over at Piers. Leon's trying to be civil, but the way the guy talks pisses him off. The fact that he slaughtered Ada was enough to rub him the wrong way, but his speech was always so terse that Leon wondered if Piers had a personality outside of being Chris's lapdog.

"Yeah." Leon lies, resisting the urge to roll his eyes. "Sure thing."

He watches Piers clench his jaw and Leon smirks inwardly. He's not being petty—not _really._ Piers has had a stick up his ass every time Leon has had the displeasure of being near him and it's nearly effortless to grind the guy's gears.

"We should reach the countryside within a couple days." PIers begins to explain. "We'll ensure the area is secure. Delta will be on standby in the event that we need back-up. There's no telling what condition the checkpoint is in. Once the area is cleared, Kennedy and TerraSave wi—"

Leon snorts. Who the hell does he think he is?

"Didn't realize you were calling the shots, Nivans." Leon grunts. "The B.S.A.A. is under the DSO's command for this investigation."

Piers furrows his brow and glares at him.

"The DSO has no jurisdiction over the B.S.A.A." He counters sharply and Leon sighs.

"The President himself demanded complete cooperation from the B.S.A.A. on this matter."

He bites the inside of his cheek to hold in his smirk. Leon can tell Piers is livid, but he doesn't really give a fuck.

"We will _cooperate_ with you," Piers hisses, "Nothing more. We have our own priorities here and have no interest in investigating France's political affairs."

"The DSO appreciates your _cooperation_," Leon spats back as he rakes a hand through his hair, "Let's be a little more civilized this time around, yeah?"

The sound of the chair scraping against the floor is grating as Piers roughly shoves himself back from the table, hand clenched into a tight fist.

"What the hell is that supposed to mean?" He questions, eyes narrowed and jaw flexed in an expression of fury.

If Leon was supposed to be intimidated, he wasn't. Chris would tug on his leash at any moment now.

"You know exactly what it means." Leon shoots back, not even bothering to look at the younger man. "No unnecessary executions."

The air is thick in the tense atmosphere his words have created. It's almost as though no one dares to breathe as curious eyes shoot between Leon and Piers. Leon isn't sure who is going to crack first, but he glares into Piers's eyes as harshly as he can in an attempt to communicate an unspoken message—_fuck you, Nivans._

Piers is livid, he can tell. There's a fire burning in his amber eyes and Leon would be lying if he said it didn't give him some semblance of a thrill. He was almost looking forward to fostering this rivalry with Piers out of some warped vengeance for Ada. If nothing else, it was certain to keep him entertained.

"Ada Wong was a threat." Piers icily says. "She had the blood of hundreds of lives on her hands. I followed orders."

Leon wonders if Piers is trying to convince the room with his claim as he speaks it aloud in hope of somehow justifying the _murder._

"And now her blood is on _yours_." Leon responds with a shrug. "Haven't you heard that an eye for an eye makes the world blind, Nivans?"

Finn rests a hand on Piers's shoulder and gives Leon a questioning look.

"Listen, guys," he starts, "Maybe we sh—"

"Would you have preferred to have Sherry's blood on _yours_?" Piers asks, his expression infuriatingly stoic as he glares right into Leon's eyes.

It pisses him off. Leon doesn't know who the fuck Piers thinks he is because he doesn't know _shit_ about his relationships with Ada and Sherry. Piers wasn't in Raccoon City and, hell, Piers wasn't _anywhere_ that mattered because he's just a stupid kid who voluntarily signed up for this shit after they'd already taken care of the majority of it. If Piers thought the world needed him, he was in for a rude awakening because he didn't mean a damn thing in this seemingly endless war.

"I seem to have forgotten," Leon lazily gestures towards Piers with a hand, "Who the fuck are you again?"

Piers looks like he could kill him. Leon doubts that he could, but he'd be more than happy to knock him down a few pegs and remind him just how low on the totem pole he really is.

"Enough." Chris finally chimes in, giving both of them a reprimanding look. "Keep it to yourself, Kennedy."

Leon looks over at Chris boredly and nods so slightly that he might have missed it.

"Right." He mumbles, rolling his eyes as he looks up at the yellowed ceiling above them. "Might wanna tighten the collar on your mutt, Redfield."

"Whose side are you on, Kennedy?" Marco suddenly asks, arms crossed over his chest in a stiff pose. "Because, from where I'm sitting, it's hard to tell."

Reid coughs.

"You workin' for the terrorists, Kennedy?" Marco blatantly asks, "Because it sure as hell sounds like it."

It's such a ridiculous question that Leon can't help but laugh. Before he has a chance to defend himself, the door flies open and slams against the wall as a young man comes bustling through.

"C-Captain," he stutters, "I need to speak with you. There's...it's an emergency."

Chris curtly nods. He rises to his feet, pausing to scowl in his direction, and Leon thinks that, if _anyone_ has the right to treat him like that, it's Chris. Really, he doesn't give much of a fuck about what Chris thinks because Chris doesn't seem to give a shit about anything anymore, but he'll reluctantly accept criticism from no one but a Redfield.

As he watches Chris duck through the door frame to speak to the kid in a quiet tone, Leon thinks about Claire. He wonders if she's still in the city, if she'll be relieved or angry when she sees him. It could go both ways and, really, Claire is a _Redfield,_ so it probably will go both ways. He deserves for her to be pissed at him and he almost hopes she will be.

Maybe she'll yell at him, but she probably won't because he knows Claire isn't the kind of woman to cause a scene at a time like this. He imagines that she'll give him _that_ look, the one that makes him feel so pathetic that it hurts, and he knows she won't say anything about before. Claire won't talk about his _problem_, his addiction, because she never talks to him about it when he's sober, but it's always there, skulking about in the corner and making them both uncomfortable as hell.

He wants her to talk about it. Leon wants her to be mad, to ask him why the hell he's in France so he can prove to her that he's changed. _I did it for you,_ he wants to say, but he knows Claire won't take that answer from him. She'll say it's bullshit, but she'll know that it isn't because there's something special between them and they both know it. No matter how far they drift apart from one another, they'll always feel the pull of one another because they're connected by something that neither of them can explain.

"Change of plans." Chris announces as he enters the room once again. "We're staying."

Leon watches Piers sit upright, body rigid as he gives Chris all of his attention. It makes him sick because the asshole probably thinks he's fucking great, like he's really contributing something to this goddamn useless war when he's not.

"Civilians have been found hiding in the Catacombs," he says, pinching the bridge of his nose in frustration, "HQ has decided we'll evacuate them. Delta will proceed to the countryside and we'll rendezvous with them later."

"This is bullshit," Finn grumbles, "Why can't Delta take care of something for once? Why's it always gotta be us?"

Reid laughs and Marco follows suit. Leon isn't in on whatever the joke is and he doesn't really care.

"Let's just get this over with." Piers says with a sigh, shaking his head as he moves to stand. "TerraSave has already withdrawn, haven't they?"

Chris shakes his head and Leon suddenly becomes very interested in what he has to say.

"Only half."

Leon wonders if Claire's a part of that half.

"They'll stay to assist with the rescue. Our responsibility is only to get the civilians out. TerraSave can take it from there."

"Might as well come along." Leon says, rising from his chair and rolling his shoulders to loosen stiff muscles. "Another set of hands never hurts."

He ignores the quiet groans and low whispers that come from behind him as he struts out the door because he's giddy over the fact that _Claire_ might be there too.

* * *

The Catacombs were everything he could have expected them to be—cold, damp, and rife with the pungent scent of decay. Piers never thought he would miss Ukraine, but he catches himself missing having to stomp through the dead forest with snow-soaked boots and hovering around a campfire in a desperate attempt to warm his frozen hands. He grimaces as he tears down a spider web that blocks his path, finding that it sticks to his glove even as he shakes his hand back and forth in an attempt to dislodge it.

"This place is giving me the creeps." Finn whispers as he stops to observe the massive wall of bones before them. He reaches out to run his hands over one of the cracked skulls that protrudes from the tower of bones and theatrically shivers.

"I've heard stories about this place. They say the walls speak at night." Marco says. "Like...all these disembodied voices trying to convince you to go deeper and deeper until you get lost."

"That's a myth." Leon retorts with a snort and the sound of his voice instantly sours the mood.

"People do get lost down here." Reid defends. "People have died."

Leon chuckles to himself and Piers does his best to ignore him.

"You really think bones are talking to people?" He incredulously asks. "B.O.W.s are weird and all, but _come on._ Ghosts aren't real."

Reid grunts and says, "No, man, but people _do_ get lost and die down here."

Piers tries not to think about it or the fact that the bones that line the passageways were all once living, breathing humans. The less he thinks about it, the easier the mission will be.

"How many civilians are we looking for?" He questions and watches Chris's broad shoulders rise in a shrug.

"Not sure," he admits, "Enough to cause a fuss. TerraSave found them."

There's something peculiar in his voice, a faint crack and an awkward pause that goes unnoticed by the rest of them. Piers knows Chris well enough to pick up on it. Something isn't right and Chris is _worried_ about it. That, in turn, worries him too because Chris doesn't worry about much.

"You think there are any infected down here?" Finn muses aloud.

"Nah," Marco replies, "It's just a bunch of old bones. There's nothing to infect…"

He pauses, strokes his chin briefly in thought before he adds, "I think."

"Like your buddy said, people get lost down here. I'm sure there are some fresh corpses lying around." Leon suggests and Finn gives him a nasty look.

"You didn't have to say that."

Leon smirks and says, "Don't tell me that the B.S.A.A. is afraid of a few infected."

Chris comes to a stop and they all follow suit. He twists at the waist, looking back at the group of them and grunts, "Give it a rest, will you? You're like a bunch of children."

Piers is grateful for Chris's pissy attitude because it inspires some silence amongst the group. The harsh blue lights clipped to their chests make the atmosphere just a little more daunting than he supposes it ordinarily would be, accentuating the shadows between the bones and the way they've discolored with age. He can barely even begin to fathom the number of dead housed within the Catacombs and he isn't sure that he wants to. Piers doesn't know why death is suddenly so unsettling to him, but he knows he needs to get over it real fucking quick.

"Captain."

The tremble in Finn's voice makes Piers anxious. He quickly pivots in the direction that it came from and finds him behind a tall column, shoulders slumped forward in a defeated stance as he stares down the long stretch of corridor ahead. Piers flicks his light in the direction of his stare and instantly feels sick to his stomach.

He didn't know a body could hold so much blood. It's splattered across the bones that line the walls of the narrow corridor and pools across an impressive amount of ground. What's left of a man is curled up in a corner, his chest torn open with no sign of viscera left behind. It makes him nauseated and he looks away, closing his eyes to try to wipe the image from his mind.

"It's fresh."

When he opens his eyes again, Leon is kneeled down beside the gore and studying it with morbid interest. He tilts his light back and forth, the beam reflecting off the still damp blood, and he stands with a grunt.

"Maybe we're not alone after all."

"Fuck," Finn breathes out, "I knew it. We're gonna die."

Marco sighs heavily and pats Finn on the back.

"We have guns, Macauley." He teasingly reminds him.

"What do you think did this?" Finn asks. "Doesn't look like anything those spiny fuckers could do."

"Hell, it could have been some kind of wild animal." Reid offers. "Doesn't have to be a B.O.W."

"Could have been a human." Leon suggests and Finn gives him a skeptical look.

"You think the French are harvesting organs for the black market in the middle of an outbreak?" Finn chuckles and mutters under his breath, "And they say the DSO are the smart ones…"

Piers doesn't have any particular guesses as to what it could have been, but he knows they need to find those civilians before they're potentially massacred as well. He voices his thoughts and the group continues to move through the dark passageways, but Chris doesn't take point this time. He lags behind, eventually falling into step beside Piers.

"I don't like this." He mumbles, voice drowned out by Finn and Marco's banter about whether or not ghosts or vampires are more dangerous.

He thinks it's strange that Chris is voicing his concern, but Piers doesn't question it.

"We're underground with the dead." Piers stiffly says. "It's not gonna be comfortable."

Chris doesn't speak for a moment. He slows his pace a little more and falls further back. Piers feels compelled to do the same.

"Claire's down here." He quietly says. "She found them. I didn't want to let them know. Whatever's down here…"

"We'll find her." Piers surprises himself with how quickly he responds.

He feels as though he's been punched in the gut. Claire is down here with them, wandering through the darkness where _something_ prowls. He feels bile rise in his throat when he blinks and sees her in the backs of his eyelids, her chest hollowed out and split wide open, and Piers suddenly knows why death suddenly haunts him.

For the first time in his life, Piers has something to lose, and he'll sooner die than let it go.

"Yeah." Chris finally says, but the tone in his voice isn't particularly convincing.

_I'll find her_, Piers wants to say.

_She matters just as much to me as she does to you,_ he wants to say.

In the end, he says nothing, because Piers Nivans has no business feeling much of anything at all for his Captain's sister.

* * *

Her lungs are burning.

Claire inhales sharply as she sprints around a corner, her sweat-dampened hair clinging to the sides of her face. She tries to be mindful of the way she's breathing, but she can't seem to control the sharp, staggered breaths that seem impossibly loud as she dashes down a stretch of passageway. The dim beam of her flashlight is erratically darting around as she moves, offering her fleeting glimpses of what lies ahead, but she doesn't have time to think about her course because she's going to _die_. She knows it.

A small sound dies in her throat and she grimaces, briefly looking back over her shoulder at her pursuer. It's a grotesque thing, some sort of reptile covered in slick scales and hundreds of spines that jut out from between them at odd angles. The mere sight of them looks painful and she doesn't allow herself to wonder about how sharp they are. It's fast, _really_ fucking fast, leaping from one wall to the other with seemingly little effort, dislodging bones with the reckless whip of its tail.

She wonders how it'll kill her. Will it be quick? A simple snap of her neck as it crushes her beneath its weight or a slow bleed caused by the sharp projections that cover its body? Are its teeth as sharp as its spines? Will it somehow infect her?

As she quickly turns at a corner, she nearly rolls her ankle but manages to maintain her footing. The crunch of bones cracking beneath the creature's feet is loud and echoes down the seemingly endless corridor. It's a relentless thing, never once hesitating as it bounces from one wall to the other from behind her, and she wonders if this is how Jill felt back in Raccoon City.

Claire knows she's going to die. She's going to run out of stamina or reach a dead end and become the monster's next victim. Whether or not she's ready to die is irrelevant at this point because she's certain that it'll happen regardless of her feelings on the matter. The best thing she can do is keep running, to lead the beast deep within the Catacombs and as far away from the civilians as possible before it kills her. The B.S.A.A. will find them before it has a chance to make its way back.

The inevitable happens sooner rather than later—a dead end, one that's punctuated by rotting skulls and sharp edges of broken bones.

_How fitting_, she thinks as she turns towards the creature and slowly backs herself into the corner. Claire thinks about a lot of things with each backwards step that she takes.

She thinks about Chris and the solemn look on his face when he realizes just how badly she fucked up. He's lost so much to this war and she hopes that her death won't be enough to push him over the edge, but he has _Jill,_ and she hopes that'll be good enough.

Claire thinks about Leon and practically hears the sigh of relief that will spill from between his lips once Chris tells him the news. He'll be a little sad, maybe, if only to justify using her death as an excuse to drink. Without her around to nag him, he very well may drink himself to death, and that possibility makes her feel guilty.

Her back comes into contact with the wall behind her and she feels the splintered edges of bone digging into her back. She swallows the thick paste of saliva that coats her tongue and presses a palm against her thigh, blindly fumbling for her knife. As she looks at it in the faint, flickering light provided by her cheap flashlight, she thinks it suddenly looks far too dull.

The creature is close now. She can see the luminescent yellow of its eyes and the way its scales ripple as it moves. The projections coming off of it remind her of crystals, thick and pale with razor-like edges that make her wince. Its shoulder flexes as it crawls along the side of the wall and it seems powerful, almost feline with its proud strut.

She feels her heart pounding in her chest so hard that it seems to ricochet against her ribcage. The beat of blood in her ears is deafening and she feels sweat drip down the curve of her back. Claire knows she's going to die, but she can put up a fight at the very least even if her fingers are trembling around the hilt of her knife.

The way she reacts surprises her. When the monster is within ten feet of her, her eyes close. Claire inhales deeply, breathes in through her nose, and holds her breath in her mouth. She's supposed to put up a fight and go down in a blaze of glory against the creature and yet…she finds herself thinking about _Piers. _He told her that he'd mourn her once when they were back in Ukraine. The recollection makes something sharp shoot through her chest.

Piers will mourn her. He'll look down at her casket with those beautiful amber eyes and _grieve._

God, she hates that. Claire wants to think about something else—the flexion of the tendons in his hand as he cocks his rifle, the slight dimple that forms in his cheek when he boyishly grins, how hot and gentle his lips were against hers during that night in the hotel. She wants to think about his cold, empty apartment and how, in another life, maybe they could have painted it with the brightest colors life had to offer.

Claire opens her eyes, looks into the slit pupils that stare at her, and plunges her knife right into its eye socket. She cringes as it drives through the rough exterior of its eyeball and it lets out a loud, _horrible_ sound that prompts her to get the _fuck_ out of there.

Her footsteps are loud against the floor, but it doesn't matter. Claire doesn't discriminate as she navigates her way through the Catacombs, taking every twist and turn she can find. She hears the monster scuffle behind her, its tail swaying so fast through the air that she can hear the whip of it. Claire darts behind a column and hisses, scraping her fingertips raw as she struggles to tear a bone from the wall. She stumbles back when she yanks it free and she tosses it so hard across the room that it loudly snaps in half.

It doesn't distract the creature like she had hoped. It merely sits in the doorway, completely oblivious to the sound. Claire watches it prowl slowly, moving its way into the room she's in, and she wrenches another bone free. As she pulls it out of place, another clatters to the floor, and she freezes out of fear that it'll lunge at her at any moment.

It doesn't...because it's _deaf._ The realization makes her laugh a little and let out a long, labored sigh. Claire thinks she might be able to use this to her advantage as she flicks off her flashlight and allows darkness to smother the room. In the pitch black darkness, she can't make out anything but the audible swish of the creature's tail against the floor.

She moves out from behind the column, feeling the wall with the palm of her hand to make her way out. When the wall disappears and she grasps at empty air, she realizes she's in a doorway and she's ready to bolt, but the creature suddenly shrieks and she hears its feet slapping against the floor.

It might be deaf, but it can _see_ in the fucking dark.

Claire whimpers in sheer terror as she begins to run.

_Yeah,_ she thinks, _I'm going to die._

Reckless—she had been reckless when she decided to play hero and enter the Catacombs alone in order to help evacuate the survivors and now she was going to die for it.

_Typical,_ she thinks, _just like a Redfield._

She supposes it'll be a closed casket funeral once the monster's through with her.


	9. Chapter 9

The pressure against her abdomen is almost unbearable, but she doesn't dare move. Claire takes in a shallow breath and braces her hands against the rocky surface above her as she attempts to turn her head to the side in order to alleviate the sharp pain in her neck, but she finds no such luck. The space she has tucked herself into is incredibly small, offering just barely enough room for her to wedge herself into it, and she wonders if she will die in this cramped crevice.

Her surroundings are shrouded in darkness so deep that it almost hurts to stare into it. Claire doesn't know how far she has ventured into the Catacombs, but she supposes that it's pretty fucking far given the lack of lighting, the stale air, and the cobweb that she knows is tangled in her hair, but she doesn't have enough space to brush it away.

It's as though her senses are in overdrive. She can feel the sheen of sweat that slicks her skin and she grimaces at the way the fabric of her shirt clings to her wet armpits when she rolls the tension out of her shoulder. Little wisps of hair are sticking to her face and something sharp is digging into her back. She's pretty sure that _something_ is the remnants of a fucking skeleton, but it's not something she wants to think about in too much detail.

The rock above her is uneven, she thinks, given the way it digs so harshly into her lower body. The sharp edges of her pelvis feel as though they have been rubbed raw by the rough surface and it lays flush against the flat of her abdomen, making each breath that she draws in far more difficult than it should be. Her respirations are rapid, a wild staccato of quick puffs and long drags of air, and she's grateful that the creature that's hunting her can't hear because she'd surely have been dead by now if it could.

She can hear it wandering through the tunnels. The swish of its tail across the floor is a sound that she has become accustomed to at this point. Claire isn't sure how long she's been down here, but the creature has passed by her four times already without noticing her. At this rate, she'll probably die in this miserably tight space, but she thinks she prefers it to being devoured alive by whatever the hell that _thing_ is.

It's approaching again. She can hear the drag of its belly against the floor and the way its tail lazily slithers behind it. Claire clenches her eyes closed and swallows hard as the sounds become louder. It's driving her insane to listen to it and she clears her throat, feeling her vocal cords rumble as she swallows down the thick paste of saliva that has formed in her mouth from disuse.

She hums quietly to distract herself from the beast. Each out of tune note that she hits trembles in the air and she wiggles her hips a little, imagining that it helps draw her deeper into the gap and just a little further away from the monster. She doesn't know where the tune she's butchering came from, but it doesn't really matter. Her horrible humming grows louder as her heart rate slowly accelerates.

This is torture. Claire thinks about all of the miserable ways she could have died in her life to try to make light of the fact that she's going to rot down here with the corpses that surround her. She could have been slaughtered by a plethora of different B.O.W.s, could have fallen to her death or been killed by the hands of plenty of bastards she has encountered in her line of work. This is probably the most peaceful way she could go and she should be grateful for it.

Thinking about death makes her nervous. She was exposed to death at a young age with the passing of her parents and has been surrounded by it since 1998, but thinking about it still makes her uncomfortable. Claire has seen numerous people die, but she never really applied it to herself. She's going to die...and then what? What happens next? What if _nothing_ happens next?

She feels nauseated by the thought despite the emptiness of her stomach. It doesn't matter what she wants to happen after she dies because it's not something she has control over. Soon she'll be dead and that will be that. Claire Redfield will just be a name, a fleeting memory until the day no one remains to remember it. What a miserable thought.

Exhaustion begins to set in when the creature has made its eighth pass through the tunnel. She wonders how long it can keep circling, but she supposes that there isn't much other prey down here. Finding her is a matter of survival because, really, it technically _is_ an animal, isn't it? If she's lucky, maybe it'll kill her in her sleep so she doesn't have to consciously wither away.

Her eyelids feel heavy and her mouth and throat are far too dry to sustain her terrible humming at this point. Claire lets her eyes fall closed because it's not like she can see anything in the pitch black that surrounds her. She breathes quietly now with a shallow rise of her chest as the thrumming of her heart begins to slow and the sound of it leaves her ears.

Claire thinks she might have drifted off at some point. She doesn't realize it until she's startled to full arousal by the loud stampede of feet echoing from the distance. There's a shout—a man's voice—and she feels her body tense in both excitement and fear.

"Wait!" She screams as powerfully as she can manage and it rips her throat raw. "There's a B.O.W. down here!"

The footsteps pause. She hears the whoosh of the monster's tail. Her throat is burning and she forces herself to swallow.

"Claire?! Is that you?"

Oh god.

"Piers!"

Her eyes are suddenly hot as they begin to water because Piers is here. Piers is _here._

"Claire!"

For a moment, she questions her own sanity. It sounds like Leon, but...

"I-It's deaf!" She stammers. "A lizard! It's fast and…"

It's moving. She hears its feet shuffle across the ground and the wall vibrates around her when it leaps onto it. The force of its weight hitting the opposite wall as it bounces back and forth is audible and she realizes it's moving because it _sees_ them. She's about to yell out when she hears a loud shot that's punctuated by a shriek of pain from the creature.

Claire can't tell what's happening. She hears a banging, a sound that she imagines is produced by the slap of its tail against something solid. One of the guys shouts and noises grow louder. The walls are shaking and she hears something heavy land, a sound that suspiciously resembles that of crumbling stone and she thinks holy _shit,_ everything is collapsing and she's stuck in one of the fucking walls.

"The tunnel is caving in!" Piers announces and she doesn't understand how his voice can be so even at a time like this. "It's blocked off. We have to go around. Claire, it's on your side. Don't...don't move."

She whimpers when the pressure against her abdomen becomes unbearable. Something fell, something came loose and it's going to fucking crush her. It sounds like the creature is rolling around and it keeps smacking the wall and all she can think about is being smothered by rocks. Claire almost laughs at the irony of it because Piers is there to save her and she's going to be crushed to death before he has a chance to get to her.

"Yeah…" She manages to breathe out, grunting as she maneuvers her hips to try to shift the weight of the rocks with no success. "I'll, uh...be here."

_Just maybe not alive._

* * *

Piers doesn't know what to expect as he sprints through the musty tunnels of the Catacombs in pursuit of the creature, but he is certain that there's no room for error this time around. He hasn't the faintest idea as to what fighting a lizard B.O.W. truly entails, but he tells himself that he's prepared for this because he has no choice but to be. Between him and Leon, he assumes that there's enough experience to bring the thing down, and he's going to make damn sure it falls hard.

Navigating around in the dark poses a particular challenge. The beam from his flashlight is rapidly flitting around as he jogs through the passageways and it casts distracting shadows that dance in his periphery. He glances back over his shoulder at Leon and notes the tense expression on his face that is made more apparent by the shadows that fill the creases of his brow and forehead. His own flashlight that's clipped to his chest illuminates the sweat that slicks his face and Piers knows that he's just as stressed about this as he is, but he doesn't have the time to ponder why.

He comes to an abrupt halt, stumbling a bit as the soles of his boots catch debris that clutters the ground. When he looks down, he realizes that shattered pieces of bone are strewn about the area and that they're likely close. Piers looks to Leon to voice such, but he finds that he already has his handgun drawn and has taken on a defensive stance. Though he doesn't care much for his character, Piers can admit to himself that Leon must have some degree of talent for this.

The _woosh_ that echoes from the darkness that awaits them is so subtle that he barely hears it. He feels his body tense in anticipation and he wipes at his damp brow with the back of his sleeve, his rifle suddenly seeming incredibly heavy as nervousness sets in. His only visual on the monster had been a glimpse of the faint reflection of his light off of its scales, just barely enough to manage to pull off a shot. The fact that the creature was powerful enough to make the tunnel collapse makes him uneasy, particularly in regard to Claire's safety.

_Claire._ He thinks about her as he slowly begins to press forward, finger hovering just above the trigger of his rifle in preparation to fire. He thinks about the way she looked the night they snuck out of the hotel, the way her cheeks were flushed from both the cold and her laughter, and he thinks about the intense look on her face as she ambushed the Revenant and the ease with which she executed it. Claire is a woman of many complexities and he admits to himself that his feelings for her are potentially just as complex.

Piers can't define what it is that he feels for her, but he knows that it's something different than he's ever felt for anyone else in his twenty-six years of life. Claire inspires a strange sense of recklessness in him and Piers Nivans has always been considered anything but reckless. When Chris informed him that she was in danger, he had been more than willing to throw caution to the wind and blindly pursue her. With her safety on the line, his own no longer mattered. Piers doesn't know what Claire is to him, but he knows these feelings are strong enough to scare the shit out of him.

He can admit that he's being careless. He's risking his own life by fumbling around in the dark with an unidentified creature in hope of saving her. Piers knows this, but it doesn't deter him like it should. He won't say that he'd die for her, but deep down, he knows that he _would_. Something changed that night in the hotel, the one in which she kissed him while under the influence of terrible French wine, and Piers wants to kick himself for letting it go as though it had never happened.

When he sees the shimmer of the beast's scales in the distance, Piers wishes he would have kissed her the way she deserved to be kissed that night. He wishes he would have said something poignant when she wore that miserable expression as she tied black ribbon around that boy's wrist. Piers wishes a lot of things, but more than anything, he wishes he knew what it was that he felt for Claire Redfield, because it's starting to seem a lot like something that he definitely shouldn't—something that feels a lot like _love._

The thought weighs heavily on his mind. Piers tries to suppress it as he peers down the sight of his rifle, but it continues to haunt him even as he pulls the trigger. The creature makes an anguished sound and Piers wastes no time in feeding another bullet into the rifle and yanking back on the bolt. He shoots again as the monster begins to approach and he thinks he sees the bullet pierce its shoulder because it seems to stagger in the poor light offered by their flashlights.

When he starts to reload once more, he keeps the focus of his periphery on the beast, and it suddenly disappears from his field of view. Piers steps back and rips his light away from where it's secured on his chest and frantically searches for the monster. He can hear it and the tacky sound of its feet sticking to the walls. It's moving, leaping from one wall to another, and it sounds really goddamn close but he can't see it.

"Where is it?" He hisses, voice high with alarm. "I don't fucking see it."

"Hell if I know!" Leon shouts back.

Piers drops his rifle to draw his pistol, but it's too little too late. He realizes why he can't find it on the walls and he redirects his attention upward just in time to catch a glimpse of its yellow eye starkly standing out in the darkness. The fucking thing is above him and he doesn't have the reflexes to react fast enough, but he attempts anyway by firing an errant shot that pierces the stone wall nearby as he's tackled to the ground.

The roughness with which he lands on the floor knocks the wind out of his lungs. Piers grunts and wonders if he struck his head against the ground because his vision is blurred when he opens his eyes. Leon's shooting at the thing, but it seems undeterred by the 9mm rounds he's unloading into its body. Piers reaches for the knife strapped to his chest as the monster wrenches forward and pierces its teeth right through his fucking shoulder.

It burns. Piers can't suppress the groan that wells up in his throat and he tries his best to stab the damn thing, but the hardness of its scales prevent him from impaling it with his knife. It clenches its jaw tighter, adding to the already unbearable pressure on his shoulder, and he's vaguely aware of the blood that's beginning to pool beneath him as it oozes from the punctures.

He doesn't register what Leon has done until the monster suddenly collapses on top of him. Piers feels its hold lighten up when it goes limp and he realizes it's dead on account of the shot Leon made, one that destroyed its remaining eye and blew through the back of its head. He lets out a sigh of relief and struggles to shove the carcass off of him with one arm. To his surprise, Leon leans down to wrench the damn thing off of him and carelessly toss it aside.

Piers accepts the hand Leon offers him and lets him assist in hoisting him to his feet. He reflexively grips his throbbing shoulder and glances down at the crumpled corpse of the monster before returning his attention to Leon. Piers nods, eyes briefly meeting Leon's, and he snatches his rifle up off the ground and slings it over his uninjured shoulder.

"Thanks." He gruffly says, nodding towards the monster.

Leon rolls his shoulders in a lazy attempt at a shrug.

"Not a problem." He says as he shoves his hands into his pockets and turns on a heel. "Let's find Claire."

They wander aimlessly through the dark, periodically calling out her name and waiting with baited breath for a reply that doesn't come. Piers feels his heart racing in his chest and he swears he can feel the anxiety radiating off of Leon as he screams out Claire's name. Somewhere in the very back recesses of his mind, Piers is aware of the worst possible scenario, but he doesn't allow himself to think about it. Claire is tough, he knows this, and he convinces himself that she's alright.

"We're wasting time." Leon says with an exasperated sigh. "We need to split up. Cover more ground."

With Claire's safety on the line, Piers doesn't even attempt to argue with him; in fact, he's almost grateful for the solitude that follows. The only discernible sound in the quiet passageways is the beat of the soles of his boots against the ground and he's appreciative of it, focusing intently on the tempo to ignore the throbbing in his shoulder as best he can.

Piers can't be certain that he isn't traversing in circles because everything looks the damn same. Every turn he makes leads to the seemingly same dark corridor lined with the same rotting bones and his flashlight casts misleading shadows that fool him into thinking that perhaps he's found her. He wonders if Leon has already found her, if he's already ushered her out to safety and left him behind to find his own way out. Piers supposes he doesn't blame him if that's the case—after all, he _did_ take out Ada.

When he turns the corner, his heart nearly stops.

The image before him is almost surreal. A slender arm hangs limply from within one of the spaces in the wall, the color of it made almost ghostly by the fluorescent glow of his flashlight. Piers swallows hard, heart palpitating wildly in his chest as he slowly approaches it. _It's not her,_ he lies to himself, _it's someone who got lost._

He panics.

Claire is wedged in the fucking wall, pinned down by fallen rock and a portion of the slab above her that has come free. She looks extraordinarily pale in the artificial light and he reaches out with a trembling hand to press his fingers to the side of her neck to check for a pulse, but the second his skin makes contact with hers, her eyes tear open and he's suddenly peering into her boundless blue eyes.

"Fuck."

He doesn't know what else to say. Piers looks at the massive chunk of rock and the shallowness of her breathing.

"Yeah," she breathlessly echoes, "_Fuck_."

His shoulder is burning, muscles straining as he moves, but Piers doesn't hesitate. He begins to pull pieces of rock from the wall, errantly tossing them onto the ground before seizing the next.

"How did you find me?" She asks, voice quiet on account of the way the weight of the rock is restricting her breathing.

"Chris heard a rumor."

He struggles to pull one of the rocks out of the wall. Piers clenches his teeth as he gives it a particularly hard tug, causing him to stumble back slightly. The rock comes free and he drops it unceremoniously, ignoring the loud _thud_ it makes as it lands.

"Chris sent you?"

Piers shakes his head.

"I wanted to come."

Her eyes widen slightly as though his words are somehow a surprise to her.

"Really?" She asks, eyes never once leaving his face.

Piers doesn't understand why it's such a big deal. Of _course_ he wanted to come.

"I wasn't going to leave you down here with an unidentified B.O.W." He gruffly says as he struggles to lift another rock with his single arm.

He attempts to use his injured shoulder to lift a particularly heavy rock and feels something catch when he moves it. He lets out a sharp hiss from the burning pain that shoots down the length of his arm and steps back from the wall to scrutinize the wreckage. Pride be damned, Piers knows he won't be able to move the chunk of rock on his own, and he clenches his eyes closed and curses under his breath.

Piers doesn't want to call out for Kennedy, but he's mature enough to admit that he doesn't have a choice. He doesn't think Leon was far off because it isn't long before he hears the clop of his boots beating against the ground and it isn't much longer before the man comes into his view.

"Oh shit," he says with a gasp, eyebrows disappearing beneath the edge of his fringe in a surprised expression, "Claire, what the hell…?"

She grimaces and uncomfortably shifts as best she can.

"I didn't have a choice." She tersely says. "I wasn't armed."

Piers feels sick to his stomach when Leon gently nudges him aside to approach Claire. His face burns with shame when Leon lifts the rock in a way that appears to be effortless. Something twists in his guts when he sees Leon's hand envelop hers to offer her leverage as she shimmies out of the gap.

His heart races a thousand times a minute when he feels her collide against him, arms thoughtlessly looping around his neck as she buries her face in the crook of his neck and he feels the wetness of her tears against his skin.

When Piers looks over at Leon, the hairs on the back of his neck stand at attention and he suddenly feels incredibly uncomfortable because he thinks the darkness in his stare looks a lot like hatred and he realizes that maybe this rivalry isn't _just_ about Ada.

No, this is about something much more, and Piers isn't sure that he wants to find out about it.

* * *

If TerraSave is good for anything, it's for throwing up camps. Leon is impressed by the impromptu camp as he sits beside the fire, listening to it pop as it greedily engulfs the mass of wood that Marco has thrown into the pile. Finn is anxiously forming laps around them, hands clasped behind his back as he wordlessly paces around the perimeter of the fire, and Leon starts to feel dizzy from watching.

"Just sit down." He says with a sigh. "You're gonna make me throw up."

Finn gives him a nasty look before opting to wander away. It wasn't necessarily Leon's intention, but he certainly doesn't have any complaints about the lack of his presence. He only briefly glances over his shoulder to see where he's gone, but instead his gaze falls on TerraSave's medical tent and the fucker sitting outside of it.

Piers is sitting there with his bare shoulder exposed as a young medic pokes and prods at his mangled skin. He doesn't so much as wince as he chats with Chris in a hushed tone, his expression as hard as usual even as he speaks, and Leon can't help but wonder if they're talking about _Claire._

His blood runs hot with fury when he thinks about the way she threw herself into his arms in the Catacombs. He blames it on the trauma she endured, assumes that she was dizzy with exhaustion and didn't know any better, but Piers didn't seem startled by the way she touched him. Leon can't help but wonder if it has happened before, if Claire has touched him before in places that are much less innocent than those involved in a hug, and it makes him sick to his stomach.

Leon tells himself that's not the case because there's no way in hell Claire could see anything in a guy like Nivans. As far as he can tell, the guy doesn't have a personality outside of being Chris's personal servant, and he can't imagine that he's particularly fun to hang around even when he's out of uniform. Claire has better taste than that. He knows this, but he can't seem to get it out of his mind.

"What's up with that?" Leon asks, looking over at Marco as he takes a long drag of his cigarette. "What's up with Nivans and Redfield?"

Marco glances over at the tent and raises a curious eyebrow.

"You know Redfield's our Captain, right?"

Leon clicks his tongue.

"No shit," he fires back, "I mean the _other_ Redfield."

Marco pauses for a moment as he thinks about the question.

"You mean Claire?" He clarifies and Leon hates the way her name sounds in his voice.

"Yeah," he grunts, "I mean _Claire_."

Marco breathes out a cloud of smoke and nonchalantly waves his hand as if to brush the question off.

"What about it? It's not anything new."

Not anything new. What the hell is that supposed to mean? What is '_it?'_

"They spend a lot of time together?"

Marco snorts at the question as he tosses the butt of his cigarette into the roaring fire.

"I guess? What the hell does it matter?" He rubs his hands together to combat the cold before edging forward in his seat to get closer to the flames. "You interested in Nivans or somethin'?"

Leon scoffs as Marco chuckles.

"Just curious." He mumbles and tries to coolly play it off. "Figured Chris would kill anyone who touched his baby sister."

"Captain respects Nivans," Marco explains, "He's a good guy. You'd see it too if you weren't always tryin' to rile him up."

He wonders if that means Nivans _is_ touching her.

"Right."

Leon crosses his arms over his chest and leans back in his chair to look up at the starless sky. It doesn't make sense that Claire would be interested in a guy like Nivans and he can't get the irritating thought out of his head.

"So they're a thing?"

Marco gives him a curious look.

"Why are you so invested in this?" He asks. "You got the hots for Captain's sis?"

Leon laughs.

"Nah," he lies, "Just curious. I've known Chris for a long time and can't imagine him letting anyone around his sister."

"Well," Marco says, "Guess you don't know him as well as you thought."

Leon guesses that he doesn't know more than one Redfield as well as he thought.

"Guess not." He says.

If he didn't know any better, Leon would have thought Nivans's entire existence was meant to antagonize him and it hits him like a ton of bricks.

"Fuck," he mutters under his breath, "_Fuck._"


End file.
